







~m«/f-faJ7..?- 




/ o? c/ 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 









THE TEARS 



OF 



JESUS OF NAZARETH 



BY 

WILLIAM C. DUNCAN, D.D., 

PASTOB OF THE COLISEUM PLACE BAPTIST CHTTECH, NEW OELEANS, AND 







NEW YOEK: 
SHELDON & COMPANY, 115 NASSAU STREET. 
NEW ORLEANS: "WILLIAM DUNCAN. 









:'' 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

SHELDON & COMPANY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of 

New York 



PREFACE. 

Whatever originality, strictly speaking, this 
book possesses consists in the arrangement of 
its subjects, the grouping of its thoughts, the 
fullness of its treatment, the fitness of its topics 
to the spiritual wants of humanity, and the di- 
rectness of its appeals to the conscience and 
the heart. Jesus of Nazareth is represented in 
His double character as a Sympathizer with His 
disciples and a Compassionate Mourner over those 
who will not hearken to His voice. His weep- 
ing beside the grave of Lazarus is taken as 
a proof and type of the one feeling ; His 
weeping over Jerusalem as a proof and type 
of the other. The Author believes that the 
reflections which have arisen in his own mind 
while considering these two prominent incidents 



IV PREFACE. 

in the Saviours life, and to which he has 
given expression in the following pages, may, 
perhaps, comfort many who are followers of the 
Redeemer, and lead some who do not now love 
Him to feel the compassion of His nature and 
to choose Him as their eternal Friend. Cheered 
by this hope he sends forth these thoughts into 
the world. 

New Orleans, October, 1859. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PART FIRST. 

%\t %tu% at fajaras' into*. 



PAGE 

The Scene at the Grave— Causes of the Saviour's Grief— Others men- 
tioned in the Scriptures as Weeping — Tears of Jesus Nobler than 
Theirs — Our Redeemer not a Proud Philosopher, but a Man sym- 
pathizing with Men — The Saviour's Smiles — The Redeemer no 
Friend of Asceticism — Yalue of the Record, " Jesus "Wept" — Tears 
not Unbecoming Man's Dignity, — as Evincing a Tender and Sym- 
pathetic Nature— True Tears not Tears of Sentimentalism — The 
Man that will not Weep a Man unlike Christ — The Mourner may 
Weep — The Weeper after Jesus shall find Him a Present Saviour. 13 

2. — & \z Sfgmpaijjjetic 8C * a r s of Christ, 

Sweetness of the Words, "Jesus Wept" — The Son of God in Tears — 
Not Want made the Saviour Weep ; and the Lesson — His Tears 
not the Tears of Ungratified Ambition ; and the Lesson — Man's 
Tears often Tears of Sin — The Weeping of Jesus prompted by 
Sympathy — These Tears prove the Redeemer Human no less than 
Divine — This Thought the Christian's Delight — The Saviour Sym- 
pathetic even in Heaven — His Sympathy the Result of His Suffer- 
ings as a Man — His Sympathy Perfect and Everlasting — The Re- 
deemer we need,— God enthroned in the form of Glorified Human- 
ity. 39 



VI CONTENTS. 



3. — gj, Sgmpaflji^iitg Subxoxtx. 

PAGE 

Christ fitted by Experience to be a Sympathizer — Sympathy of Jesus 
ever Ready — Sympathy of Jesus All-powerful — A Blessed Eecord, 
" Jesus Wept" — Jesus a Sympathizer in our Poverty — Jesus a Sym- 
pathizer amid the Frowns of the World — Jesus a Sympathizer in 
our Temptations — Jesus a Sympathizer when we feel secret Anguish 
of Heart — Jesus a Sympathizer in our Mourning over the Way- 
ward—Jesus a Sympathizer when Death bereaves us of Eelatives 
or Friends — Jesus a Sympathizer in all our Troubles — This Sympa- 
thetic Saviour Faithful amid our Unfaithfulness, and Faithful For- 
ever — The Backslider and the Wavering Christian should Remem- 
ber His Tears — The Impenitent should Weep in Regret, and Ap- 
peal to the Redeemer's Compassion. 59 



PART SECOISTX 



1. — 1 1 g xx s W8L 1 z p in g abtx 1 1 1 xx s n 1 1 m . 

Jerusalem from Mount Olivet on the Morning of the Triumphal Pro- 
cession — The Saviour's Pause, and His Lamentation over the 
Doomed City — Pathetic Grandeur of the Scene — Jesus Wept over 
Jerusalem on account of her abused Privileges and her Consequent 
Punishment — The People Foredoomed, yet might have been Blest 
— Picture of Jerusalem's Happiness and Dignity, had Jesus been 
received as the Messiah — The Opposite and True Picture — Solemn 
Tenderness of the Saviour's Plaint — Sorrow of the Redeemer over 
Jerusalem's Downfall and the Nation's Fate — Their Spiritual Perdi- 
tion the chief Cause of His Lamentation — The Example of Jesus 
teaches us to Weep over those of our Neighborhood who obey not 
God and Christ — Our Duty to Save them by our Tears coupled with 
Personal Efforts in their Behalf. 83 



CONTENTS. Vll 



2. — & sacking* of ffilj r i s t ' * Sorrnfaiitg Ktars, 

PAGE 

The Example of Jesus a Teaching Instrumentality — His Weeping 
over Jerusalem an Eminent Lesson — The Redeemer's Self-forget- 
fulness in all His Acts — This Trait beautifully Shown by His Lam- 
entation on Olivet — His Own G-riefs Forgotten in Jerusalem's com- 
ing "Woes — Tears of the Saviour Indicative of His Intense Benev- 
olence — His Love even to His Enemies and Murderers — Lesson of 
Kindness and Gentle Dealing Taught by His Example — This Be- 
nevolence not Confined, but World-wide — Our Benevolence should 
be as Free and as Large — Tears of Jesus Manifest His Deep Solici- 
tude for Man's Salvation — In this Anxiety we should Share — Why 
Christians Weep over the Impenitent 109 



3. — % Ij e S?u b %n u x * b ^umzvttutian abzx J§ % n n t x s . 



The Weeping of Jesus on Olivet a Proof of the Sincerity of His Wish 
to save the G-uilty from Ruin — The People over whom He Wept 
He had Labored for in Love ; and hence His Tears — Consistency 
of this Grief with the Fact (well known to Jesus) that the Jewish 
Nation was devoted to Destruction — Repentance would have Saved 
the People; but, not Repenting, they were Lost by their Own 
Fault — Invalidity of the Sinner's Excuse that his Fate is Predeter- 
mined by God — The Impenitent Man Self-destroyed — God's Offer 
of Salvation to all a Sincere Offer — Every Man Invited in Yarious 
Ways to Look in Penitence and Faith to Christ for Salvation — Tears 
of Jesus still Appealing to the Sinner — The Weeping of the Re- 
deemer Manifests the Dreadrulness of the Doom of those who Re- 
ject His Love — These Tears Forebode the Sinner's Eternal Destruc- 
tion — Now is the Time to Seek the Saviour ; now, while God has 
not Hidden the Things that pertain to Man's Peace. . . .131 



Vlll CONTENTS 



4. — ®|u Compass ifl it ate Senrg of Christ. 

PAGE 

The Sinner's Unjust Suspicions of the Saviour — Christ's Conduct 
Proves His Sincerity — The Eedemption He Wrought Evidence of 
His Earnest Compassion — The Sufferings He Underwent for Men 
Guilty and Condemned — No Stronger Proof of His Sincerity Pos- 
sible — The Lo^e Displayed in this Work of Redemption — The Sav- 
iour Warning by His Tears respecting the Things of Man's Peace 
— Man Disbelieving and Resisting the Admonition — Danger of Sal- 
vation's being Hidden from the Sinner's Eyes — The Day of Mercy 
Now, but Soon the Night of Despair — The Redeemer would Save, 
and still Invites by His Spirit — Impenitent Man yet Doubting — 
Offer of Mercy Made to the Most G-uiity — The Offer Made to all 
Classes — The Clemency of the Redeemer still in Operation — Last 
Call to Attend to the Things Pertaining to Peace 14 *1 



$? 3 H p I IP 5 f . 



%\t fears at Rants' 0x0. 



"Jesus wept."— John xi. 35. 



Mary, for a moment, ere she looked 



Upon the Saviour, staved her faltering feet, 

And straightened her veiled form, and tighter drew 

Her clasp upon the folds across her breast ; 

Then, with a vain strife to control her tears, 

She staggered to their midst, and at His feet 

Fell prostrate, saying, " Lord, badst Thou been here, 

My brother had not died I" — The Saviour groaned ^ 

In spirit, and stooped tenderly, and raised 

The mourner from the ground, and, in a voice 

Broke in its utterance like her own, He said, 
" Where have ye laid him ?" — Then the Jews who came, 

Following Mary, answered through their tears, 
"Lord, come and see !" — But, lo ! the mighty heart 

That in Gethsemane shed drops of blood, 

Taking for us the cup that might not pass — 

The heart whose breaking chord upon the cross 

Made the earth tremble, and the sun afraid 

To look upon His agony — the heart 

Of a lost world's Redeemer — overflowed, 

Touched by a mourner's sorrow ! " Jesus wept." 

1ST. P. Willis. 



JOeepixig %i J^irtjs' Jotyb. 



The Scene at the Grave — Causes of the Saviour's Grief — Others 
Mentioned in the Scriptures as Weeping! — Tears of Jesus Nobler 
than Theirs— Our Redeemer, not a Proud Philosopher, but a Man 
Sympathizing with Men— The Saviour's Smiles— The Redeemer no 
Friend of Asceticism — Value of the Record, " Jesus Wept" — Tears 
not Unbecoming Man's Dignity, — as Evincing a Tender and Sym- 
pathetic Nature — True Tears not Tears of Sentimentalism — The 
Man that will not Weep a Man unlike Christ — The Mourner 
may Weep — The Weeper after Jesus shall find Him a Present 
Saviour. 



fmts SSteqmtg at Swarms' Comlr. 



In the village of Bethany, a short distance from 
Jerusalem, there lived a family that was composed 
of a brother and two sisters. The Saviour had 
spent many an hour of friendship beneath their 
roof ; for, as we are told, " Jesus loved Martha, 
and her sister, and Lazarus." While He was ab- 
sent in Persea, " beyond Jordan," however, and not 
long before His final visit to Jerusalem, wan Dis- 
ease appeared in the midst of this cherished circle, 
and threatened to remove its ornament and hope. 
Lazarus, having sickened, lay at the point of 
death. The anxious sisters despatched a mes- 
senger to the Friend of their brother, imploring 
Him to hasten to their help. But no help came. 
So far from responding promptly to their call of 
distress, the Redeemer " abode two days still in 
the same place where He was" ; and when at 
length He did commence to return, He knew, and 



14 JESUS WEEPING 

told His disciples, that Lazarus was sleeping the 
sleep of death. He deferred relief till relief seemed 
quite impossible, — that He might lay bare to the 
bereaved family and to the world the depth of His 
affection, and show forth unto all the power and 
the glory of the Son of God. 

When Jesus arrived at Bethany, Lazarus had 
been dead four days, and was now lying in the 
grave. Martha and Mary, hearing that their 
Friend had come at last, went out, one after the 
other, to meet Him, and to inform Him that the 
prop of their house was broken. The sorrow of 
the one, though deep and bitter, was partially 
kept in check ; but that of the other displayed 
itself in outbreaking sobs and a torrent of tears. 
Both, however, looked for comfort from the Teach- 
er whom they had often entertained ; and both, it 
would seem, had a trembling anticipation that even 
yet, late as He had arrived, He would do something 
to relieve their distress, and restore them to their 
former joy. Calm and self-possessed was Martha 
as she told Jesus of her regret at his untimely ab- 
sence ; but Mary, hurried away by the violence 
of her grief, could not refrain from throwing her- 
self at His feet, and sobbing aloud, as she said to 
Him, in the same words which her sister had used, 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 15 

u Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had 
not died !" 

Those who stood around and witnessed this 
scene of sorrow, were deeply moved by the grief 
of the sisters, and could not but join in bewail- 
ing their loss. And the heart of the Saviour was 
also touched. As He looked upon the saddened 
brow and drooping head of Martha, and upon the 
form of Mary quivering in anguish before Him, and 
upon the moistened cheeks of them that mourned 
in company with the bereaved, the chords of sym- 
pathy were struck within His soul, and His eye 
overflowed with tears. Then there crept a hal- 
lowed awe over the feelings of that sorrowing as- 
semblage ; and, for the moment, the beating of 
their hearts was stilled. A solemn silence gath- 
ered around them all, for " Jesus wept." The 
emotions which agitated Him amid that scene of 
anxious though tfulness, could not be quelled. His 
bosom heaved sigh after sigh ; and the drops of 
tender compassion rolled down His face in a co- 
pious stream. 

The memory of Lazarus, and the manifested sor- 
row of his sisters and friends, wrought upon the 
affectionate nature of the Saviour, as He stood be- 
side the burial-place of the departed, and caused 



16 JESUS WEEPING 

Him to shed the tears of sympathizing grief. The 
manly form which He had so often seen in bloom- 
ing health, was now lying before Him cold and 
dead ; the hand which He had so often clasped 
in love, was nerveless and stiff ; the eye which 
had so often gazed with rapture into His, was 
closed and dark ; the tongue which had so often 
welcomed Him as an honored guest, was motion- 
less and dumb. Lazarus was no more ; and his 
departure had brought the shadow of loneliness 
upon that home which, while he lived, his pres- 
ence had cheered and comforted with its gladsome 
light. All this was before the mind of the Re- 
deemer, while His eye and His ear were filled 
with the sight and the sound of a surrounding an- 
guish that vented itself in groans, and sobs, and 
tears. No wonder is it, therefore, that He let the 
drops of sorrow fall. 

It may be, too, that the Saviour's thoughts trav- 
eled forward to the time, now so near, when He 
Himself should be stretched, a lacerated corpse, in 
the tomb ; and when, bereft of their stay and com- 
fort, His mother, His brethren, and His disciples 
should stand and weep beside the place in which 
He was to lie in the breathlessness and the rigid- 
ity of death. The scene which was before Him, 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 17 

and the scene which was pictured forth by His 
keen foresight into the future, were very sad to 
look upon, and so " He groaned in spirit, and was 
troubled" even to the depths of His soul. The 
fountain of His sympathy was unsealed, and " Je- 
sus wept." 

Nor need we think that these precious tear- 
drops shed at Lazarus' grave were poured forth 
only for them who were lamenting beside his 
tomb. Jesus perceived not only the coining suf- 
ferings of those who were then His disciples, but 
the sufferings that were to afflict His followers, in 
one shape or another, during every age ; and He 
knew that on such occasions they would need His 
sympathizing aid. He saw that sorrow would try 
them at times and in places where He could not 
appear to them in person, and console their aching 
hearts. Often should they weep ; but He could 
not be visibly present to wipe their tears away. 
Often should they sigh ; but He could not come 
and let them visibly lean their fainting heads upon 
His breast. Foreseeing all this, He was unable to 
keep back the tears of grief which sprung forth 
from His eyes and trickled down His cheeks. 

There was a thought enwrapped in these re- 
flections, however, which soothed their sting, and 



18 JESUS WEEPING 

turned the tears that Jesus shed into tears of sor- 
rowing joy. He knew that He should be ever 
present with those who love Him in the person 
of that other heavenly Comforter, the Holy Spirit, 
and thus be able to relieve their every woe ; and 
He knew that, taught by the Spirit, His disci- 
ples would call to mind the holy scene at Lazarus' 
grave, and make the dew-drops of His sympathetic 
mourning a balm for all their wounds. His grief, 
therefore, bitter as it was, was not unmixed with 
pleasure ; for it must have made Him glad to 
remember that myriads of disconsolate believers 
would hereafter take comfort from the record of 
His tears, and that they would be made strong 
under the assurance that, though removed to 
Heaven, He still ministers by His Spirit to the 
wants of the bereaved, and imparts to them the 
fullest consolation and peace. 

The Scriptures tell us of many who have wept, 
— some from disappointment, some from sorrow, 
some from sympathy, some from repentance, some 
from joy. Nowhere, however, do they tell us of 
tears so generous, so pure, so soul-melting, as those 
of the Saviour when He mourned at the grave of 
His friend. Hagar wept because she thought her- 
self about to be deprived of her son ; Esau wept 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 19 

because he, the first-born, had been supplanted by 
his younger brother ; Hannah wept because her 
misfortune was cast up to her by her rival as a 
fault. Job in his wretchedness "poured out tears 
unto God/' until his face was " foul with weeping/' 
and on his eyelids was "the shadow of death"; 
Abraham wept in sorrow over his departed wife j 
King Hezekiah wept when he was informed that 
he was soon to die ; the Prophet Elisha wept at 
the thought of the evil which the Syrian Hazael 
was to bring upon the land of the Hebrews. Sam- 
son's wife shed tears of deceit before her husband ; 
the daughters-in-law of Naomi shed oyer her tears 
of regretful affection, when she was about to leave 
them and return to her native home. Jacob wept 
when he first saw Rachel ; and he wept, in unison 
with Esau, when he fell on that outraged brother's 
neck after their long separation ; and he wept when 
he heard that Joseph, his darling son, ^as dead. 
This same Joseph could not help weeping aloud 
when he made himself known in Egypt to his 
brethren ; and Jonathan and David, when they 
threw themselves into each other's arms, embraced 
amid a flood of tears. The eyes of Jeremiah be- 
came fountains of water as he gazed in bitterness 
upon the ruins of Jerusalem ; the captives of 



20 JESUS WEEPING 

Babylon "wept" with grief when they " remem- 
bered Zion" ; and they who had seen the first tem- 
ple before it was destroyed, "wept with a loud 
voice/' in a transport of joy, when they beheld 
the foundations of the second temple laid. 

And as it was in the times of the Old Testament 
dispensation, so was it in the days when the New 
had just begun its course. Peter shed tears of 
penitence on meeting the mournful glance of the 
Lord, whom he had thrice denied. The " daugh- 
ters of Jerusalem" gave way to tears of doleful 
lamentation, when they saw Jesus walking be- 
neath His cross to the place of crucifixion ; and the 
bereaved disciples threw wide the flood-gates of 
their sorrow while their Master was lying pale and 
breathless in the tomb. The widows whom Dorcas 
had relieved hung over her dead body with out- 
bursts of anguish, and eyes that dripped with dew. 
Paul preached the Gospel for three long years in 
Ephesus with a wet cheek and an anxious heart ; 
and the elders of Ephesus, when they parted with 
him at Miletus, "fell upon his neck, and wept." 
Finally, the Apostle John "wept much" in his 
apocalyptic vision, because there was " no man" 
found "in heaven, nor in earth, neither under 
the earth," who was "worthy to open and to 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 21 

read the book" which was " sealed with seven 
seals." 

Long as this record of weepers is, it might be 
made longer ; but, after all of them should be 
brought forward, there would be mentioned not 
one whose tears were so entirely unselfish as those 
that Jesus shed at the grave of His departed friend. 
He wept for the woes of others, and not at all for 
His own ; though even then the shadow of the cross 
was flinging itself athwart His path. His noble 
heart beat not in solicitude for His own fate, but 
only with the warmest throbs of sympathy divine. 
And most beauteous indeed was the expression of 
fellow-feeling with man's infirmities then given by 
the pure and spotless Lamb of God. It came at 
the time, and it will ever come, with a rare power 
from Him who is the perfection of all that is excel- 
lent in humanity ; for it is a sentiment as finely 
expressed as true, that 

" No radiant pearl which crested Fortune wears, 
No gem that, sparkling, hangs from Beauty's ears, — 
Not the bright stars which Night's blue arch adorn f 
Nor rising sun, that gilds the vernal morn, — 
Shine with such lustre as the tear that breaks 
For others' woe down Virtue's lovely cheeks." 

Had we never heard of the Saviour, and were a 



99, 



JESUS WEEPING 



stranger to tell us that, many years ago, a Being 
of His elevated character came into the world to 
redeem it from the curse of sin by the offering of 
Himself as an atonement for its guilt, and by the 
leading of a life of unstained perfection, we should 
scarcely expect the narrator to describe to us a 
person who spent His days iq familiar intercourse 
with all classes and conditions of men. We should 
hardly expect to hear that a Being so illustrious and 
dignified mingled freely with every rank in society ; 
and that He conversed with all kinds of people, 
taught them, and entered cordially into their feel- 
ings of hope, and sorrow, and joy. Now, whether 
we should look for it or not, this was precisely what 
the Saviour did. Coming, as the Son of God, to 
perform a work too mighty for the highest arch- 
angel, and possessed of a glory before which the 
glory of the seraphim grows pale, He yet exhib- 
ited no outward badge of His heavenly origin; He 
burst not in regal pomp upon the world ; and He 
erected not a throne of earthly splendor before 
which men were to bow and worship in astounded 
reverence and wondering awe. Nothing of the kind 
did He who was by nature and by right the " King 
of kings and Lord of lords." He appeared as a man 
of lowliness, — -a man sprung from a family in mod- 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 23 

erate circumstances, and brought up to humble la- 
bor from His youth. And when He went forth 
upon His more public ministry, He showed Him- 
self the same in character and in acts, — associat- 
ing, not with the influential and the great, but 
with those who knew but little of monarchs, and 
courts, and men of noble birth. 

Such was the condition Jesus chose to assume ; 
and in this condition it was that He passed a life 
that was closed by the bringing in of man's re- 
demption. You do not read of His withdrawing 
Himself, like some haughty philosopher, from soci- 
ety, and compelling those who desired His com- 
pany to seek Him in some dignified retreat ; but 
you read of His mingling freely with all classes 
everywhere, and teaching the people, as occasion 
offered, the lessons of happiness and truth. He 
met them as a man among men, a friend among 
friends ; and He entered with sympathy into their 
wants, their hopes, their gladness, and their griefs. 
From none did He stand aloof; but admitted the 
despised, the forsaken, the outcast, to His pres- 
ence, and gave them looks of kindness and words 
of cheer. To all that sought Him He paid atten- 
tion, — extending to each the hand of help, and 
laying open to each a sympathizing heart. 



24. JESUS WEEPING 

Jesus felt for humanity in every variety of it, 
and in every condition. Gentle was He, and kind, 
and compassionate, to all ; for, wherever He found 
a fellow-being, there He found an object of regard, 
and treated him as a brother beloved. He sym- 
pathized with them that were in sorrow, and them 
that were in joy ; but chiefly did He feel for those 
who were tortured by the ranklings of grief. Hear 
Him how He says to the weary in soul, " Come 
unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest !" Mark how He com- 
forts the despondency of His disciples ; how pa- 
tiently He instructs their ignorance ; how readily 
He forgives their waywardness ; and how He 
pities them, folds them in His arms, and pillows 
their head upon His bosom. Observe Him healing 
the sick, imparting sight to the blind, curing the 
deaf, giving feet to the lame, feeding the hungry, 
comforting them that were in sorrow, and showing 
to men in all their wants and woes that He is their 
earnest Friend. Note His kindness to the sinful 
woman who bathed His feet with her tears ; and 
listen to the sweet tones of His forgiving voice, 
saying to the wife who had proved faithless to her 
marriage vow, " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, 
and sin no more." Hear Him speak to the noble- 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 25 

man of Capernaum who had left his son lying at 
the point of death, " Go thy way, thy son liveth." 
See Him touch the bier of the youth who was his 
widowed mother's support ; and mark how at the 
word of Jesus' power the dead man started up to 
life. Look at Him as He stood by the grave of 
Lazarus, and wept ; and look at Him as He gazed 
down from Olivet, and shed the tears of grief over 
a city which, though He loved it tenderly, Him- 
self had doomed to meet with a speedy destruc- 
tion from the hands of its foes. 

Tradition says that the Saviour was never 
known to smile ; but the tradition is late in its or- 
igin, and nothing worth. There can be no doubt 
that the happiness of others waked up the sense 
of pleasure in Jesus' soul ; and this pleasure could 
not well do otherwise than show itself upon His 
countenance in a cheerful, even if it were a fleet- 
ing, gleam of joy. The face of the Saviour, we 
may be sure, was not always overclouded with 
sadness, though the Gospel Histories have no- 
where positively recorded that He was ever seen 
to smile. Rays of sunshine must have played 
around His head ; but these, no doubt, were fitful 
and few. How could it be otherwise, when there 
was a burden ever pressing on His heart which 

2 



26 JESUS WEEPING 

forced Him to dwell upon coming scenes of mourn- 
fulness and distress? Gethsemane, and Golgotha, 
and the garden of the tomb, kept looming up be- 
fore Him ; and it would have been strange indeed 
had not the cloud of anxiety which hung over His 
soul often cast its dark shadow upon His brow. 
Knowing what anguish awaited Him, He pondered 
on the thought until it wrote itself upon His face, 
and even infused a tinge of melancholy into His 
voice. His, then, must ever have been a calm and 
dignified joy ; and we may well imagine that His 
very smiles partook of the complexion of His 
mind. They were sadly gladsome smiles ; and, 
when seen to play for a moment around His 
mouth, they revealed an earnest absorption of 
soul that would harmonize with cheerfulness, but 
not with ill-timed merriment and riotous delight. 

Jesus did not refuse the sanction of His pres- 
ence at the festivities of the marriage in Cana of 
Galilee ; and hence we may consider it proven that 
He frowned not upon any recreation which, while it 
was timely, was also suitable to the dignified na- 
ture and noble destiny of man. Approving thus 
of innocent and worthy enjoyment, He was often 
gratified, we may presume, in looking on the hap- 
piness of His friends ; and, therefore, we may take 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 27 

it for granted that He gave them, when it was 
proper, an encouraging smile. That He ever went 
beyond a smile, — that He indulged in that laughter 
which in mere man has its time and its place, — we 
can not easily believe ; for laughter seems ill suit- 
ed to a character so grand and solemn as His and 
a nature so exquisitely sensitive and so divinely 
serene. His thoughts were too pensive to harmo- 
nize with such an expression of gayety ; and His 
work was too dignified to admit of His giving way 
to such an exhibition of careless mirth. We are 
willing to think, then, that the Redeemer never 
laughed, even amid the most cheerful scenes of 
His life ; but we do not, we can not, think that 
He never smiled. Smile He did, we firmly be- 
lieve ; and to him that saw it His smile must have 
been as sunshine to the soul. 

No record was needed to tell us that the Sav- 
iour smiled ; and consequently it has not been told. 
We do need a record, however, to inform us that 
" Jesus wept"; for in this way we are taught that 
He who promises to heal our infirmities has a 
fellow-feeling with us in our sufferings, can enter 
into our griefs when we mourn, can appreciate our 
anxieties, and, whatever be our trouble, can bid 
His tears to flow with ours. We want to know 



28 JESUS WEEPING 

that the Saviour who is offered to us can under- 
stand and sympathize with the anguish of an 
aching heart ; we want to know whether He will 
feel for us in our trials, and be ready to adminis- 
ter the cordial of relief. All this the record lets 
us know when it tells us in its sweet simplicity 
that " Jesus wept." 

There are those who think that tears are unbe- 
coming the dignity of man, and would allow to 
woman alone the privilege of weeping when the 
heart is sad. Time was, perhaps, when some of 
us so thought, and when we would resolutely 
check the rising tear and keep it locked up within 
the font of grief. But we have learned, I hope, 
that we were wrong ; and we now feel that the 
eye which is never dimmed by a tear is not more 
unnatural and repulsive than the face which is 
never lighted with a smile. To weep is human. 
Jesus wept ; and what He did any man may do. 
If He disdained not to exhibit this proof of 
tender-heartedness, and to open wide before His 
friends the fountain of His sorrow, none of us, 
however stern, need be ashamed to let the dew- 
drops of sympathizing affection fall. " There is 
a sacredness in tears." Take them away, and 
where can you find the suitable expression for 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB 29 

grief, for regret, for love ? Take them away, and 
man would be no longer man. Oh, then, think not 
harshly of those that weep ; for weeping is too elo- 
quent and too solemn a thing to be mocked or de- 
spised. 

Tears manifest a tender and sympathetic na- 
ture ; and this, as abundant examples prove, may 
well consist with the highest nobility of soul. 
Consider the grandness of the characters of many 
of them who are represented in the Scriptures as 
giving way to tears. And, going out of the Bible, 
remember how Homer speaks of the sagacious 
Ulysses as weeping profusely, and represents 
Achilles, — the poets' model of magnanimity and 
courage, — as sobbing often like a very child. And 
the bard, in thus depicting these Grecian heroes, 
is strictly true to the dictates of propriety, and is 
upheld by the example of subsequent writers who 
have described the characters and doings of other 
celebrated men of ancient and of modern times. 
Feeling it is that distinguishes man from the brute ; 
and they who will always shut down the flood- 
gates of grief, do violence to their natural emo- 
tions, and make their hearts as callous as the 
flinty rock. There is a beauty in tears, an aw- 
ful beauty, which, when we see them gushing forth 



30 JESUS WEEPING 

in their crystal streams, moves us with the power 
of an eloquence that we can not resist. It is 
pride, then, not philosophy, that forbids us to 
weep ; and he who follows its behest, will strip 
himself of his chief ornament, and mar the fair 
proportions of his manhood. That, we may be 
sure, is a false dignity which would make us 
apathetic, and freeze the current of feeling that 
flows within our breast. It does violence to our 
nature ; it widens the distance between us and 
Him who is the only perfect man ; it degrades 
us from our true position, and makes us yet more 
unlike our God. 

I am not pleading for that weak and pitiful sen- 
timentalism which often manifests itself by tears. 
The weeping that is noble is not the weeping of 
self-indulgence ; for such weeping has no regard to 
man's moral culture and to the development of his 
religious nature. Weeping of this kind can serve 
no good purpose ; but will only unhinge our men- 
tal and moral faculties, derange the working of our 
souls, and unfit us for the stern activities of life. 
It can never minister to our spiritual growth ; but 
will be sure to weaken our powers, to give a wrong 
direction to our impulses, and to disqualify us whol- 
ly for the discharge of our duties to ourselves, to 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 31 

our fellow-men, and to our God. Away with the 
tears of a barren and hard-hearted sentimentalism, 
— tears of hypocrisy, unshed over real necessities, 
but poured out like water over imaginary evils and 
over the figments of the novelist's brain. Talk not 
to me of tears like those of the executioner of 
Paris, who, after he had plied the guillotine all day, 
was found at night with bloody hands but tearful 
face weeping over the fictitious " Sorrows of Wer- 
ter." These were the tears of a wretch, and not 
of a man. Give me true tears, — the tears of meek 
endurance, of genuine sympathy, of penitential sor- 
row, of responsive love. These are noble, manly 
tears. While they melt the heart, they strengthen 
the mind, chasten the affections, give a right de- 
termination to the will, and improve all in us that 
is godlike and grand. Such, and such alone, is the 
weeping for which I plead ; for this is the weeping 
of a wholesome discipline by which the soul is made 
to exercise its best and highest functions, and the 
whole man is reconstructed after the likeness of 
Christ. 

From what has been said we learn how great a 
mistake it is to suppose that every indulgence of 
emotion is a mark of weakness. Rather is it fre- 
quently a mark of power. Man was made to feel ; 



32 JESUS WEEPING 

and it is often right that what he feels should find 
expression. This is love ; and we should nevei« 
forget that God is love. Who has not known fam- 
ilies in which much of happiness is thrown away, 
because the warm kindlings of the soul are pur- 
posely smothered ? We can not but grieve when 
we see the sternness of the father, or the artificial- 
ity of the mother, crushing out the embers of affec- 
tion from the children's young hearts, and training 
them up in the formalities of an intercourse that 
prides itself upon restraining all outward show of 
its emotions. True it is that beneath this cold ex- 
terior there are sometimes heard the throbbings of a 
heart that is warm with love ; but, then, that love 
is almost lost which does not find expression, — lost 
to him who feels it, and lost to him on whom it is 
bestowed. 

Too often, however, education and habit will 
make the outward and the inward correspond ; and 
then the fount of feeling, frozen hard and fast, can 
not be unsealed, and its waters be persuaded to 
flow. Thus will these children be robbed of their 
birth-right for ever. Better would it have been for 
their parents to have burnt out their eyes even, 
than so to have dried up the streams of sympathy 
that were eager to gush from their hearts. Oh, 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 33 

the capacity to love is a treasure which can not be 
too sacredly guarded; and the power to express that 
love is a power which should be cultivated to per- 
fection. Man was made to love ; and it is but 
right that he should manifest his affection in the 
family circle, in the social gathering, and in his 
intercourse with the world. Why should he be 
ashamed of that which proves his likeness to the 
Saviour ? Man is a sympathetic being. Then let 
him not withhold the word of kindness, the look 
of compassion, the tear of responsive grief. Not 
in vain shall he show to others how he feels for 
them ; for his heart of sympathy shall be like a 
spring of pure water that pours from the mountain 
side, — sparkling with gladness itself, and bearing to 
every sterile field the treasures of fertilizing joy. 

Think it not unmanly, then, mourner, if thy 
soul is melted at times by sorrow. Give thy feel- 
ings vent ; and if the tears will flow, let them flow 
unchecked. " Jesus wept" ; and thou mayst weep. 
Thou art not disgraced by weeping, if thy trouble 
be deep enough for tears. When thou art bowed 
down in spirit, thou needest not imprison the drops 
of thine anguish. There is no sin in weeping ; only 
be careful not to murmur in giving way to grief. 
Though " Jesus wept," He uttered no complaint, 



34 JESUS WEEPING 

but resigned Himself in meek submission to His 
Father's will. So do thou, afflicted mourner. 
Weep ; it is thy privilege : weep, but never re- 
pine. Weep, not in sorrow, but rather in joy ; for 
thou hast no cause to be comfortless, when thou 
knowest full -well that He who wept for thee on 
earth will soon uplift thee to Heaven, and wipe 
thine every tear away. Yes, " there is a calm for 
those who weep" ; and that calm thou shalt enjoy 
forever in the land which troubles and trials can 
not invade. The Saviour beholds the gushings of 
thy misery, and He pities thee in His heart of 
hearts. He does not forbid thee to weep, for He 
remembers the drops of grief He shed Himself; 
but He does forbid thee, who art a Christian, to 
weep like one who will not acknowledge that all 
the acts of God are merciful and right. Even in 
thine hour of keenest anguish, therefore, raise thy 
dewy eye to Heaven in serenest resignation ; and, 
whilst the gentle sigh is heaved, and the pensive 
tear is shed, confess the justice and the goodness 
of Him who rules on high. Weep, if thou wilt ; 
but forget not that thy affliction, be it what it may, 
was sent to chasten thy spirit, and to fit it for that 
abode which is prepared for thee in the realms of 
bliss. The Lord would loosen thy hold on earth, 



AT LAZARUS' TOMB. 35 

and make thee fix thine affections above. Then, 
" traveller in the vale of tears", be glad in the 
thought that thy mourning, bitter as it is now, is 
only the short-lived storm that ushers in an ever- 
lasting calm. There is no weeping in the Heaven 
for which thy soul is ripening under its present 
grand discipline of sorrow ; for there thou shalt 
hear nothing, and feel nothing, more of grief, but, 
supremely happy in the Redeemer's presence, and 
supremely glorious, thou shalt shine eternally u a 
star of day." 

It may be that some one of you is weeping every 
day in secret ; and weeping because you feel that 
Jesus has not yet become your sympathizing Sav- 
iour and Friend. You are sighing over your now 
discovered sinfulness, and are groaning under the 
now felt burden of your guilt and the now realized 
curse of a violated Law. When you are alone by 
day, the tears start forth unbidden from your eyes ; 
and often at night you feel them welling up from 
the fountain of sorrow, and bedewing the pillow on 
which you lie. Troubled is your soul ; for you see 
a just God arrayed before you, and threatening to 
destroy you in His ire ; and you see an Eternity 
of misery and despair. No wonder you weep. 
You ought to weep, — to weep bitterly at the re- 



36 JESUS WEEPING, ETC. 

membrance of your guilty misdoings, and your 
guilty neglect of God, and your guilty rejection 
of Christ. Weep, then ; but weep not as one who 
has no hope. You are not yet beyond the reach 
of help ; for the same Jesus that " had compassion 
on" the widow of Nain, and said to her in her sor- 
row, " Weep not," is now willing to have mercy upon 
you, and to bid you dry up your tears. Pour out 
your wants before Him ; confess your sins, and 
beg Him to smile upon and cheer your drooping 
heart. 

Weep the tears of humble grief, — a grief that 
bows at the Saviour's feet : oh, weep the 

" Blest tears of soul-felt penitence, — 
In whose benign, redeeming flow 
Is felt the first, the only sense 
Of guiltless joy that guilt can know." 

Pour forth the tears of sincerity and earnest- 
ness : then will Jesus quench your weeping, and 
give you " everlasting consolation and good hope" 
in His sympathetic love and saving power. 



Ifye le^s of SjjtypnftlS- 



Sweetness of the Words, "Jesus Wept" — The Son or God in 
Tears— Not Want made the Saviour Weep ; and the Lesson— His 
Tears not the Tears of Ungratified Ambition ; and the Lesson — 
Man's Tears often Tears of Sin — The Weeping of Jesus Prompted 
by Sympathy — These Tears prove the Redeemer Human no less 
than Divine — This Thought the Christian's Delight — The Saviour 
Sympathetic even in Heaven— His Sympathy the Result of His 
Sufferings as a Man — His Sympathy Perfect and Everlasting — 
The Redeemer we Need,— God Enthroned in the Form of Glori- 
fied Humanity. 



Cfje jlpjratjjetu: Coo of Christ* 



" Jesus wept." It is the shortest and the 
sweetest verse in the Bible ; for He that is spoken 
of as shedding these dew-drops of compassion is 
the unchangeable God who has promised to wipe 
all tears from off all faces. There is no expres- 
sion so touching, none so soul-comforting, in all the 
literature of earth ; and there are few others that 
can compare with it even in the literature which 
comes to us from above. It is the shortest verse 
in the Scriptures; but rather than lose it, short as 
it is, we would consent to the tearing out of whole 
chapters which speak less consolation to the grief- 
stricken heart. This record of the outstreaming 
tears of the Saviour lays bare to us the innermost 
feelings of His soul, and shows us what a deep 
and exhaustless fount of love wells up within His 
breast. It tells us, what we long to a know as- 
suredly", that the Redeemer in whom we believe, 



40 THE SYMPATHETIC 

and whom we worship, is alive to all the sorrows 
of humanity , — that He is "touched with the feel- 
ing of our infirmities ", and has a warm and ten- 
der sympathy with our grief. Brief as the sen- 
tence is, it is full of comfort for every mourner, — 
whispering peace to the tumult of his anxious 
heart, and quieting all the throbbings of his woe. 

Surely, it is a strange and sorrowful spectacle — 
the Son of God in tears ! This is He who is able 
to bow the heavens, who can tear up the deep 
foundations of the earth, and who can smite into 
nothingness the islands of the sea. But, lo ! He 
weeps. Drops of grief are bursting from the eyes 
of Him whose every look is gentleness, and are 
trickling in mournfulness down His pallid cheeks. 
But wherefore does this mighty Being weep ; and 
wherefore does He sigh ? There is a reason why 
He feels ; and there is a reason why He thus ex- 
hibits the emotions which are working in His soul. 

The Saviour did not weep for want, as many 
have. True it is that, though there dwelt in Him 
" the fullness of the Godhead", and though He 
was the absolute owner of the universe, He often, 
in the days of His humiliation, had not where to 
lay His head. Frequently was He hungry, fre- 
quently was He thirsty, and frequently was He 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 41 

ready to sink under the fatigue of His labors. 
But never did He shed a tear on these accounts. 
Throughout the entire day would He travel along 
the sultry road, having no thought of complaint ; 
and then would He spend the night on the chill 
mountain-top in the offering of glad thanksgiving 
and humble petition to God. Rich beyond our 
conception, He lived in poverty ; and, whether as 
a youth or as a man, He murmured not, but was 
ever cheerfully busied with the w r ork His Father 
had bidden Him to do. 

Think of this, you that feel the pinchings of 
want, real or imaginary ; and remember that your 
Lord, though poorer than ye, not only suffered no 
complaint to escape His lips, but permitted none 
even to rise in His heart. You may deem your 
lot a hard one, and be tempted to repine. Look- 
ing around you in your daily walk, or lying upon 
your couch at night, you may cherish thoughts of 
bitterness, while there is passing before you the 
affluence of others, and may allow the tear of 
envy to start up and flow. Thoughtless com- 
plainers, ye ought to know that this is not only 
folly but also sin. Jesus never grieved over His 
poverty, or because others made more show than 
did He in the pageantry of the world. Think 



42 THE SYMPATHETIC 

on Him, the unrepining outcast, before ever you 
envy the position of any fellow-mortal again ; 
and learn to check the beginnings of murmuring 
as they spring up in your soul. 

Neither were the tears which Jesus shed the 
tears of ungratified ambition. He might have been 
the grandest monarch the world ever saw ; but 
this was far from His desire. Though " King of 
kings" in His native dignity, and though appoint- 
ed, as the divine Mediator, to exaltation at the 
right hand of the Majesty on high, He lived among 
men a life of abasement. The honors which the 
multitude wished to confer upon Him, He refused 
to receive ; and when, in spite of His intimations 
of the -spiritual nature of His reign, they were de- 
termined to make Him an earthly monarch, He 
hid Himself from their sight. To carry out the 
intentions of His Heavenly Father, — to teach and 
to redeem fallen humanity, — this was His sole am- 
bition. It was for this that He took upon Him- 
self the form and the nature of man, " humbled 
Himself, and became obedient unto death, even 
the death of the cross." Such was the object of 
His mission to the Hebrew nation, and to the 
world. That His own countrymen rejected Him, 
as they certainly did ; that they derided* Him; 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 43 

that they mocked Him; that they treated Him 
with cruel insults, — all this, while it pained His 
heart, and sometimes made Him weep in sorrow 
over their doom, never caused the tear of disap- 
pointed self-seeking, or of mortified pride, to glis- 
ten in His eye. These were feelings of which Jesus 
had no experience ; for He, the gentle and the 
pure, knew no sin, and was superior to all guile. 

Would that this, which is wholly true of Jesus, 
could be said with even an approach to truth of 
any one of us who profess to be His disciples and 
the followers of His example. Too often do we 
place our affections on some earthly object, and, 
having clung to it with a fervor which ill befits the 
Christian, give way to sorrow, when it is taken 
from us by God's righteous judgment, and shed 
over it the tears of an unholy regret. Too often 
do we chase some earthly phantom with all the 
eagerness of the infatuated worldling, and then, 
after we see that it has eluded us, sit down and 
weep with disappointment. Too often do we aim 
at the honors which are conferred by men, and, 
when we fail to attain them, mourn over our mis- 
fortune with tears, and murmur because our merit 
has not met, as we think, with its deserved reward. 
Unworthy weeping is the whole of this indeed ; 



44 THE SYMPATHETIC 

and how utterly unlike the weeping of the Saviour. 
Foolish are we, and sinful, to let any of these 
things stir up the fountains of our grief ; for what, 
after all, are the best affections of earth, and the 
sweetest enjoyments of earth, and the noblest dig- 
nities of earth, to those who are told that they 
should seek, not earthly treasures, but a crown of 
celestial glory which shall never fade away ? 

There are none of us, however perfectly we may 
have succeeded in steeling ourselves into stoic for- 
titude, who have not often wept ; for the world in 
which we live we have all found to be a " vale of 
tears." But, alas ! how frequently have the tears 
we shed been tears of sin ! Some cause too tri- 
fling to be mentioned has excited us, and made us 
weep, when it would have been more becoming in 
us to have borne the annoyance in silence, and 
hidden it from the knowledge of our friends. Dis- 
appointed selfishness has too often let itself be 
seen in tears of murmuring, and heard in the loud 
lamentation of complaint. Verily, we are all guilty 
in this matter. Tears of mortified pride have 
we poured forth in sinful abundance, and tears of 
vanity justly rebuked, and tears of anger unright- 
eously displayed, and tears of ungrateful discon- 
tent with the dealings of the God who hath 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 45 

arranged all things so wisely and administered 
them so well. It was wrong in us to weep on 
these accounts ; and therefore it was that we did 
not receive on such occasions the sympathy of our 
exalted Saviour and Friend. Had we only wept 
the tears of anguish, of penitence, or of sorrow, 
He would have felt for us in the time of our dis- 
tress, and would have said to the wild beatings of 
our hearts, " Be still !" Then should we have dis- 
covered that Jesus did not learn to weep in vain ; 
for, the moment He spoke to our perturbed 
spirits, they would have been sweetly lulled to 
rest. 

Jesus of Nazareth stood by the tomb of Laz- 
arus, and wept, not from a feeling of want, not 
from the regrets of ungratified ambition, hut from 
the promptings of the divine sympathy which heat in 
His heart. He saw the anguish of the bereaved 
sisters, He saw the grief of the by-standers, He 
saw, perhaps, the future sufferings of the disciples 
of His love ; and, as He looked upon it all, the 
chord of compassion in His breast was touched, 
and " Jesus wept." 

The tears which the Saviour shed beside the 
grave of Lazarus, and in the presence of Lazarus' 
friends, were tears of fellow-feeling ; and we ought 



46 THE SYMPATHETIC 

to be thankful that the Evangelist John has pre- 
served their memory in the sacred record which he 
has penned. The drops of sympathetic tenderness 
that fell by Lazarus' tomb prove that Christ was 
man as well as God ; for they show that He was 
moved by human affections, as are we, that He en- 
tered into human suffering, that He was sensitive 
to every cry of human woe. When we see Him 
weeping beside the corpse of His friend, and weep- 
ing because the spirits of those He loved were over- 
whelmed with grief, we feel that He is indeed a 
man, and that He can sympathize with all the feel- 
ings and all the weaknesses of man. Looking upon 
Him as He rebukes the winds and they obey His 
voice, we shrink away from Him under the con- 
sciousness that we are sinners, and are afraid that 
He can not be human, but only divine ; looking up- 
on Him as He calls the dead to life, we are sure 
that He is not a mortal, but only an incarnation of 
Jehovah ; but looking upon Him as He sheds the 
tear of sympathy before the tomb of Lazarus, we 
are convinced that, even though truly God, He 
must likewise be truly man. Then are we made 
certain that we can share in His sympathy ; and 
w x e feel assured that He will manifest a tender in- 
terest in our sorrows, will wipe the drops of anguish 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 47 

from off our cheek, and still the fearful tumult of 
our soul. 

Aye, blessed be the record which shows so ten- 
derly that Jesus of Nazareth was truly man as well 
as truly God. Being thus human no less than di- 
vine, the Redeemer possessed human feelings just 
as we possess them, — though in Him they were 
refined and elevated by His higher nature, and by 
His perfect purity and holiness of life ; He felt 
human want ; He was subject to human infirmi- 
ties ; and in all points did He resemble His breth- 
ren, save only that He knew no sin. Led away by 
the contemplation of His excellence and power as 
God, we are too prone to forget that the Saviour, 
while He dwelt on earth, had all the feelings of a 
man ; and that even now, exalted and glorified as 
He is, He has still the heart and the sympathies 
of a man. It is this human sympathy of His which 
makes Jesus so lovely in the Christian's estimation, 
and gives Him so strong a hold upon the Chris- 
tian's soul. The believer is rejoiced, it is true, to 
think that Christ is an all-sufficient Redeemer by 
virtue of the shedding of His atoning blood ; but 
he feels that something else is needed besides par- 
don to fit him for the inheritance that is promised 
to the saints. He perceives that he needs protec- 



48 THE SYMPATHETIC 

tion from evil, that he needs comfort amid tribula- 
tion, that he needs the sympathetic treatment which 
will sanctify him in heart and life. Knowing all 
this, and observing how he is beset with calamity 
on every side, how grief looks grim upon him in a 
thousand shapes, and how trouble waits Tor him at 
every turn in his pilgrimage, the spirit of the be- 
liever bounds within him in gladness, when he calls 
to mind amid his thoughtful anxiety that Jesus is 
not only his all-sufficient Redeemer, but his Com- 
forter in every time of ill ; and that, as a Heavenly 
Priest and Mediator, Jesus has a heart that is 
touched by human suffering and throbs in sym- 
pathy with every human woe. 

The Saviour has gone up, crowned with blessing 
and honor, into Heaven; and there He is still " God 
manifest in the flesh", but God in flesh that is 
etherialized and glorified. In Him we behold the 
invisible Jehovah made visible in the form of a 
perfect humanity ; and the splendor which streams 
from His countenance the eye of Faith can gaze 
upon (which it could not upon the shinings of 
God's immediate glory) without being struck with 
blindness and the tremblings of dread. He is the 
temple of Heaven, — its ever-shining light ; and He 
towers up therein in all the loftiness of His grand- 






TEARS OF CHRIST. 49 

eur, pouring down a more lustrous effulgence than 
does the angel that is fabled to stand bedecked 
with brilliancy in the midst of the sun. He is 
the Lamb seated on Heaven s throne, — the only 
medium of communication betwixt short-sighted 
man and the unseen God. Towards Him go forth 
our affections and our desires ; and they centre in 
Him as the most perfect manifestation of Deity 
which we with our present limited capacities can 
understand and know. 

Though He has ascended from the scene of His 
humiliation to that of His glory, and though the 
human body which He carried with Him has un- 
dergone some mysterious spiritual change, Jesus 
has lost none of the warm and tender sympathy 
which He manifested while He dwelt on earth. 
He has even now the same melting eye, the same 
outstretched arm ; the same compassionate heart. 
Not yet has He forgotten the days of His own 
" strong crying and tears" ; nor has He forgotten 
the sufferings of His flesh, the taste of " the worm- 
wood and the gall." Still is He with His afflicted 
people ; and He has ptit at their command all the 
resources of His power and His love. Does their 
faith grow weak ? He strengthens it. Does their 
affection begin to languish ? He revives it. Does 

3 



50 THE SYMPATHETIC 

trouble fall upon them ? He sanctifies it to their 
spiritual good. Does sorrow come ? He adminis- 
ters to them the needed consolation. In Him, their 
great High Priest, they know themselves to be 
complete ; for He gives them wisdom to guide 
their steps aright, and fortitude to endure their 
trials ; and, making them holy, He fits them for 
eternal bliss. 

It is a fact fraught with comfort to all His disci- 
ples that Jesus did not choose for Himself a visible 
abode on earth, but went up % to Heaven and took 
His seat where we can see Him only with our spir- 
itual eye, on the throne of universal dominion and 
majesty and might. Were He with us only in the 
body, we should frequently have to send for Him 
at a distance, when we desired His aid ; and then 
He would often, as in the case of Lazarus, arrive 
too late to render us the wished-for help. In the 
event supposed, He could only show Himself in one 
locality at a time ; whereas now 

" Where'er we seek Him He is found, 
And every place is holy ground." 

* 

His Spirit, — our Heavenly Guide and Monitor and 
Comforter, — is present in all places wherever called 
upon ; and so we may approach Him when we 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 51 

please, and receive an answer to every earnest 
prayer. 

This Jesus of Nazareth has acquired a fellow- 
feeling for us by means of the sufferings which 
He endured as a man upon earth ; and hence, 
though now exalted to be a Heavenly Mediator 
between us and God, He is a High Priest who can 
sympathize with us in all our bewilderment, our 
trouble, and our grief. He feels for each of us 
that loves Him, and is trying to obey Him, the 
tenderest affection and concern; and we may be 
sure that, whenever we flee to Him, we shall ob- 
tain either the grace that delivers or the grace 
that comforts. Temptations, trials, sorrows, ought 
never to overcome us, or plunge us into despond- 
ency ; for free and open is our access to Him who 
is easily u touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
ities" and pains. There is no ground here for hes- 
itation and doubt. If we will only call to mind 
the tears which Jesus shed in the grave-yard of 
Bethany, His bitter lamentation over Jerusalem, 
His mercy displayed so wonderfully on Calvary, 
we shall certainly be persuaded that, glorified 
though He is, He still is moved with sympathetic 
tenderness and love. Clothed in our nature, and 
wearing that nature in the presence of the angels 



52 THE SYMPATHETIC 

and of God the Father, He thinks just as much of 
us, and is as solicitous for our welfare, and regards 
us with the same sympathy, as He would, if He 
now sojourned among us in a visible bodily form. 
Is it not said of Him that He " ever liveth to make 
intercession for us" ; and did not He Himself, 
after His resurrection and not long before His as- 
cension, leave us these words of promise and con- 
solation, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world." What more do we want to 
prove that, though in Heaven, Christ sympathizes 
with His friends upon earth, and means to perfect 
them, even if it be by suffering, for everlasting 
joy ? Let us not despond, whatever comes ; for 
Jesus is our sympathizing Comforter and Friend : 

" Our Fellow-sufferer yet retains 
A fellow-feeling of our pains ; 
And still remembers, in the skies, 
His tears, and agonies, and cries. 

" In every pang that rends the heart, 
The Man of Sorrows has a part : 
He sympathizes in our grief, 
And to the sufferer sends relief." 

It is just such a Saviour as the exalted Jesus 
that we guilty and disconsolate creatures need ; 
and it rejoices us to know that He is pleading this 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 53 

day with His Father in our behalf. Oh, it is a 
soul-comforting thought that the Redeemer has 
even now the same compassion for our sinful race 
which He felt while dwelling upon earth. JSweet 
is it, too, to think that He has borne a human 
though glorified body within the vail of Heaven ; 
and that there He sits, enrobed in a perfect hu- 
manity, upon the throne of unfading glory and 
undecaying power. This makes us sure that His 
sympathy with us is as warm, as tender, as close, 
as endearing, as ever ; and tells us that His ear is 
always open to the call of our distress. There- 
fore do we approach Him with joy as our Heav- 
enly Mediator, — as the One in whom the eye of 
our faith can behold the brightness of the Father's 
glory and the image of His person. In Him we 
discover all the severer attributes of the mighty 
and unchangeable God ; and we find them sweetly 
tempered with infinite kindness and love. Our 
soul flows forth to Jesus thus exalted as a perfect 
manifestation of the Deity ; and we bow before 
Him in holy reverence and awe. Oh, He has 
drawn very nigh to us by the assumption of our 
nature ; and we feel that the words of comfort 
which He utters fall from lips that, having spoken 
formerly on earth, speak now from Heaven, and 



54 THE SYMPATHETIC 

discourse most winningly of mercy in unison with 
truth and of righteousness harmonized with peace. 
It may be that, when you think of the Father, 
you can not divest yourselves of the idea of God's 
terribleness ; and that you are conscious of some- 
thing about Him which is dreadful and dark. You 
can not help conceiving of Him as that awful 
Being who is invested with a might before which 
the heavens tremble and the earth rocks to its 
lowest seat; and as that awful Being whom the 
human mind can not comprehend in the midst of 
His mysterious and inaccessible grandeur. This 
view of God keeps Him away from you, as it were, 
and does not encourage you to open to Him the 
avenues of your heart. But, cease from such a 
mode of contemplation, and think of Him no more 
as an abstract and invisible Deity, but as a Deity 
embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, and made 
palpable to your senses in the form, the face, and 
the characteristics of a man. Think of the Deity 
thus ; and your mind will be in perplexity about 
Him no more, your soul will shrink away from 
Him no longer with a feeling of dread, and your 
lips, expressing now the emotions of a heart de- 
lighted in His presence, will cry aloud with 
Thomas, " My Lord, and my God !" 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 55 

In the person of Christ, transfigured and spirit- 
ualized as it now is, we can not but perceive the 
embodiment of the Father's attributes ; and, as we 
think upon Him in this character, our souls are 
satisfied with His evident capacity to answer all our 
w^ants. Looking thus upon the Deity, we are con- 
scious of no thrill of terror ; but experience, on the 
contrary, an unspeakable sense of pleasure, and long 
to study more and more closely the mystery of that 
glorious nature in the contemplation of which our 
finite minds are utterly lost. We behold the same 
body which once tabernacled among men, — the 
same body which was ill-treated by its enemies, 
which fainted in the garden, which expired on the 
cross, which lay in the grave, which burst the 
bonds of death and ascended to the throne of the 
universe. It is the same body indeed ; but it is 
that body etherialized, so to speak, and freed from 
every taint of mortal imperfection. Thus is it that 
the God whom we dare not look upon in His origi- 
nal brightness, unveils Himself to our spiritual 
sight. Divested in this way of the dreadfulness 
that hangs around Him, and clad in the robes of a 
divine humanity, He continually opens up to us a 
wider and deeper view into His character, — display- 
ing new perfections, uncovering sources of mercy 



56 TEAKS OF CHRIST. 

previously hidden, and spreading out before us a 
broader exhibition of His sympathizing love. Ab- 
solute Sovereign as He shows Himself to be, we 
are sure that He is the self-same Redeemer who 
lived a life of abasement for us on earth, who 
atoned for our sins by the spilling of His blood ; and 
who, gifted now with all power, means to aid us in 
temptation, support us in trouble, and prepare us 
for the Paradise above. 

Yes, this exalted Mediator, who is Deity incar- 
nate, is a Saviour whom we all may love and may 
adore. He has the mighty power of a God and 
the warm sympathies of a man. Therefore He is 
as able as He is willing to save and to console to 
the uttermost all who come unto the Father by 
Him as a Mediator and Redeemer. Let us each 
approach Him, then, in faith, and give Him the 
homage, not only of our lips, but of our hearts 
and our lives. Then shall a stream of peaceful- 
ness and holy joy flow down from Him into our 
happy souls ; and we shall bathe ourselves for ever 
in a flood of light and life and love. 



ft §jjhip^ffyizi¥)(j §^bioi|ir. 



Christ Fitted by Experience to be a Sympathizer — Sympathy op 
Jesus ever Ready — Sympathy of Jesus All-powerful — A Blessed 
Record, "Jesus Wept" — Jesus a Sympathizer in our Poverty — 
Jesus a Sympathizer amid the Frowns of the World — Jesus a 
Sympathizer in our Temptations — Jesus a Sympathizer when we 
Feel Secret Anguish of Heart — Jesus a Sympathizer in our 
Mourning oyer the Wayward— Jesus a Sympathizer when Death 
Bereaves us of Relatives or Friends— Jesus a Sympathizer in all 
our Troubles — This Sympathetic Saviour Faithful amid our Un- 
faithfulness, and Faithful for ever — The Backslider and the 
Wavering Christian should Remember His Tears— The Impeni- 
tent should Weep in Regret, and Appeal to the Redeemer's 
Compassion. 



% Sjnnptjn^iitg Saiiionr 



The heart of the Redeemer is full of sympathy 
for men in their fallen and exposed condition ; for, 
when He lived in abasement on earth, He was com- 
pelled to undergo in His own person sufferings and 
trials and temptations of every kind. He knows 
the power and the keenness of them all; He knows 
their number, their fierceness, and their strength. 
He has counted them, has withstood the shock of 
their blast, has wrestled with the wrenchings of 
their might ; and thus has He learned how to feel 
for those who are hard beset by trouble, and how 
to deliver them in their hour of pressing need. 

And then in all this Jesus is just such a sympa- 
thizer as our heart longs to find, that it may pour 
forth before Him the story of its tribulations and 
woes. It brings us sweetest comfort to know that 
we have a Mediator in Heaven whose ear is ever 
open to our complaints, who hears them with will- 



60 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

ingness, and keeps the words we utter in constant 
recollection. Pleasing indeed is the thought that 
this same Saviour has gone through the furnace in 
which we are cast, has felt the beatings of the tem- 
pest which is raging round our head ; and that, 
in consequence, the fluttering of our heart is but an 
answer to the fluttering of His heart, our pain the 
counterpart of His pain, our fear the image of His 
fear, our groans the echo of His groans, our tears 
the response to His tears. Faith and experience 
inform us that in Him we have a Friend to whom 
we may unbosom all our care, to whom we may re- 
count the narrative of our troubles, and on whose 
sympathy we may always rely. Such a Friend is 
above the price of rubies and of pearls ; and as 
compared with Him the finest gold of Ophir is 
nothing but dross. 

The sympathy of Jesus with those who love Him 
is perfect. Not only was it to redeem them from 
the punishment due to their guilt that He put off 
the robe of His glory and came down to earth, but 
it was to fit Himself to be their Sanctifier, that so 
He might re-unite them the more closely to God. 
In His own person He went through all that we as 
Christians have to undergo, that He might become 
the more able to manifest sympathy to the sorrow- 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 61 

ing, and know the better how and when to send us 
relief. He sees our fears, He feels our anguish, 
He hears our plaintive sighs and our outbursting 
groans. And, if we come and lay our case before 
Him, He will administer suitable consolation, and 
speak the words of peacefulness to our agitated 
souls. We have only to approach Him with con- 
fidence, to fall in supplication before Him, and He 
will listen to the upbreathings of our prayer. Then 
will He call to us from Heaven in gentleness, and 
give us the assurance of His love. The calm voice 
of His sympathy will fall like a spell upon our soft- 
ened souls. It will diffuse a holy charm around ; 
and along the chords of our heart tones of heavenly 
music will thrill 

"Like the sweet melody which faintly lingers 
Upon the wind-harp's strings at close of day, 
When, gently touched by Evening's dewy fingers, 
It breathes a low and spirit-melting lay." 

The sympathy of the Saviour is always equal 
to our need. Good is it at times to seek a hu- 
man friend, and confide to him our troubles and 
our fears. He may, perchance, give us some 
solace, and say a word that will cheer our faint- 
ing heart. But we can find no such a comforter 
and adviser as Jesus among all our earthly compan- 



62 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

ions. Troubled and anxious themselves, they are 
not alwavs in a frame of mind which admits of their 
thinking of the troubles and anxieties of others. 
Their patience, too, though it may endure long, is 
likely to be wearied out with our constant coming; 
and their business may frequently prevent them 
from attending to our wants. It is not so, how- 
ever, with the Friend we have above. He is al- 
ways ready to listen to our complaints, seeing that 
He is the same in compassion yesterday, to-day, 
and for ever. His patience is exhaustless ; and at 
no time is He so occupied that He can not attend 
to the petitions of all who draw nigh to the throne 
of His grace. Never was He known to neglect the 
supplication of the destitute or to despise their 
prayer. To every one that asks of Him He giv- 
eth liberally ; for His heart is the store-house of 
pity, of gentleness, of condescension, and of love. 

Besides this, the Mediator who feels for us so ten- 
derly, has all power to comfort us and to bring us 
relief. Though the sympathy of Jesus should be 
strong enough and warm enough to melt our heart 
with responsive affection, yet could it never af- 
ford us perfect happiness, were we not assured 
that it is conjoined with ability to deliver us from 
all our woe. Kind as He might be, if He were 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 63 

also powerless as human friends so often are, He 
would not be, what He now is, all that our souls 
desire. His ear might be open to hear ; but if His 
hand were shortened, so as to be unable to save, 
He would not be our refuge and our stay. He 
might weep when we wept ; and yet, if His re- 
sources were not abundant enough to answer all 
our necessities, we would not apply to Him in 
every time of want, and ask Him to lighten the 
burden of our care. But, when we perceive, as 
we do, that to His wonderful sympathy is added 
infinite might ; when we are assured that He will 
not only weep over, but heal, our wounds, that He 
will not only love, but soothe, our troubled soul ; 
when we have learned that He has not the will 
alone, but also the power, to bring light out of 
darkness, and to chase away fear by the gladden- 
ing beams of hope ; oh, when we perceive- all this, 
we feel that Jesus is every thing the heart can de- 
sire, and we cling to Him as the Friend who lov- 
eth at all times, and with mare than a brother's 
love. 

A cheering truth is this, fellow-believers in the 
Gospel, that we have in Heaven an all-powerful and 
ever-sympathizing Friend. Let us bless the rec- 
ord which tells us that " Jesus wept" ; for here 



64 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

is a balm for every wound, a cordial for every care. 
There is not a sigh that stirs our bosom, there is 
not a pang that tears our heart, which finds not in 
His breast a quick response. His ear is always 
open to the story of our wretchedness ; His eye is 
always ready to fill and overflow with tears. His 
heart is never weary with giving sympathy ; His 
hand is never weary with imparting peace. All 
our trials, and our wants, and our wishes, and our 
hopes, and our feelings, have been His ; and not 
a tremor have we had of anguish to tvhich the 
chords of His spirit have not vibrated loudly and 
long. 

Are any of us in- poverty, and do we feel the 
pressure of want ? Let us remember that our 
Lord was poor, — having no home of His own dur- 
ing His regular ministry, and having His necessi- 
ties supplied by the kind liberality of friends. He 
was born in a place where beasts of travel were 
wont to lodge at night ; He found shelter during 
His life of wanderings, sometimes beneath the roof 
of one who wished to hear His words of wisdom, 
sometimes not at all ; and when He died, His body 
was embalmed with another man's spices, and bur- 
ied in another man s tomb. — He is able to sympa- 
thize with us, therefore, if we have need of this 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 65 

"world's goods, and feel the pinchings of destitu- 
tion ; and we may be sure that He is thinking of 
us in our distress, and will, in His own wise time 
and way, pour into our bosom the oil of comfort 
and of joy. 

Are any of us frowned upon by the world ? It 
becomes us, in such a case, to call to mind how 
our Master was reviled, and mocked, and rejected; 
how His teachings were slighted and contemned ; 
how His example was disregarded, and even made 
the subject of false representation ; how His ad- 
monitions were treated with rudeness and con- 
tempt ; and how, at last, after* multiplied insults 
and cruel torture, He was nailed in ignominy upon 
the cross. Therefore does He know how to feel 
for us, if we are exposed to ill treatment from 
those who hate us and would do us harm. Even 
the sting of ingratitude He is able to extract, and 
to soothe its fiery wound. He saw enough of this, 
and experienced enough of it, from those whom 
He sought to benefit by His instructions, and for 
whose spiritual salvation He sacrificed His dignity, 
His comfort, and His life. He remembers how 
His countrymen repaid Him for His heart-throbs 
of kindness ; and He remembers, likewise, how 
even His favorite disciples forsook Him in the hour 



66 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

of His distress, and left Him to do battle with the 
powers of darkness all friendless and. alone. 

Are any of us encompassed by temptation ? 
The Saviour has not forgotten the wilderness, and 
the conflict there waged by Him with Satan ; nor 
has He forgotten the thousand arts and wiles of 
the Deceiver, and the malignity of His might. 
He has not forgotten Gethsemane, where Belial 
plied Him hard ; nor the hill on which, while He 
hung quivering in agony from the cross, Belial 
shrouded His soul in clouds of darkness, and shut 
off from Hini the sight of His God. We can 
know nothing of a temptation so terrible as that ; 
and, if we could, Jesus would be able to sympa- 
thize with us in it, and to support us under the 
torturings of its attack. 

Have we some secret bitterness of soul, some 
heart-anguish, which we can not impart to any 
earthly friend ? While the Saviour sojourned in 
the flesh among His brethren, He had many an 
experience into which none who saw Him could 
enter, and which only His Heavenly Father could 
understand. He feels for us now just as His Fa- 
ther then felt for Him ; and, knowing this corrod- 
ing care that consumes us, He invites us to come 
and whisper it into His sympathizing ear. If we 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 67 

will only take Him at His word, and confide to 
Him our hidden distress, He will administer the 
desired comfort to our heart. He has erected a 
throne of sympathetic love in Heaven, and thither 
may we go with all the troubles which others can 
not comprehend ; and, when kneeling there, we 
need keep no sorrow back, no trembling doubt, no 
anxious fear. * 

Do we mourn over the thoughtless waywardness 
of those who are dear to our souls, and whom, in 
spite of our warnings and entreaties, we see per- 
ishing in their guilt ? It may be that when we 
have been most anxious for their welfare, and 
showed our anxiety the most, they have wounded 
us in our affections, and made us weep the tears 
of grief. Our Saviour knows how sad our bosom 
is ; for He endured the same, and even worse, 
from some who called Him Friend. Nay, did not 
many of those who professed themselves His fol- 
lowers, and who seemed at one period to be as 
honest and as zealous as the others, — did not 
many of these become offended at what they called 
His " hard sayings," and kept company with Him 
no more ? Were not even His own brothers 
vexed with His teachings ; and did they not for a 
time withhold from Him the fullness of their con- 



68 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

fidence and faith ? Ah, then, He is ready to sym- 
pathize with us in this form of our sorrow. Let 
us turn to Him, therefore, and ask for consolation, 
when our love is slighted, when our affectionate 
admonitions and beseechings are unheeded, and 
when they whom w T e long to benefit reject our 
proffered aid, and put aside the hand that would 
grasp their souls %nd rescue them from the burn- 
ings which are eternal. He will console us, and 
will assure our fainting hearts, saying to us for our 
comfort, " Sorrow not ; ye have done your duty, 
and your garments are free from the stains of 
blood." 

Has Death come into your family, and torn a 
loved one from your embrace ? Consider Jesus 
weeping at the grave of Lazarus, and know that 
He is sympathizing with you in your bereavement. 
Tenderly does He gaze down upon you from 
Heaven ; and, could He now weep in the midst of 
His glory, He would mingle His tears with yours. 
Look up into His face, and learn from His compas- 
sionate smile how ready He is to infuse the balm 
of comfort into your soul. 

Art thou a father who hast been bereft of an 
infant child ere yet it had learned to lisp thy name 
and fling its tiny arms around thy neck ? Or has 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 69 

the son who bore thy likeness been stricken down 
in ripening manhood, and left thee all childless and 
alone? Or has a daughter who brought to mind 
the image of her sainted mother been wrapped in 
her winding-sheet and laid away in the chambers 
of the dead ? The Saviour pities thee, thou weep- 
ing mourner; and the throbbings of His heart 
answer back to the throbbings of thine. 

Art thou a mother lamenting for the babe which 
fell asleep upon thy breast, and woke no more ? 
Or is thy maternal bosom rent with anguish be- 
cause of the innocent boy who will never again 
cheer thee with his merry laugh and playful ways ? 
Or art thou grieving over the loss of the little girl 
who recalled the scenes of thy maidenhood, or the 
loss of the grown-up daughter who had just as- 
sumed the responsibilities and cares of married 
life ? Be comforted, thou sorrowing soul. Thou 
art not forgotten by Him who has the power and 
the will to soothe the achings of thy woe. Seek 
Him, and ask relief. Then will He give thee " for 
mourning" " the oil of gladness" ; and for " the 
spirit of heaviness" He will give thee "the gar- 
ment of praise." 

Art thou a husband sighing over the new-made 
grave of thy wife ; and does it seem to thee that 



70 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

cheerfulness has fled for ever ? There is one above 
who has compassion on thee, and will send thee 
comfort. — Art thou a widow left spouseless and 
friendless to struggle with adversity and to cower 
beneath the world's harsh frown ? The Saviour 
knows the bitterness of thy heart; and, if thou 
wilt only make the request, He will turn the 
streams of that bitterness into the sweet outgush- 
ings of joy. — Art thou a child that hast followed 
the corpse of thy father to its long home, or buried 
the loved remains of thy mother "low in the 
ground"? Thou art bereaved indeed. But, forget 
not, in the tumult of thy grief, that Jesus is a 
father to the fatherless, and that He has more than 
the affection even of a mother for the children of 
His love. — Brother, hast thou been deprived of 
thine only sister; or, sister, hast thou been sev- 
ered from thine only brother? Mourn not as 
though all were dead who think of thy welfare. 
There is an ever-living Friend in Heaven who feels 
for thee, and would ease the painful beatings of 
thine heart. Go to Him in supplication, tell Him 
of thine anguish ; and He will give thee rest. 

Come, thou that art bereaved, and look upon the 
Saviour who has a fellow-feeling with thee in thy 
woe. When thou didst lately consign the body of 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 71 

that cherished one to the tomb, thy heart seemed 
withered, a desolating blight came over thy soul, 
and thou didst feel forlorn and crushed to earth. 
Thou didst grieve greatly over thy loss, — perhaps 
too much ; and thou diclst forget for the time, it 
may be, that there is a Friend in Heaven into whose 
bosom thou art entitled to pour all thy sorrow and 
complaints ? Has He thus far escaped thy recol- 
lection ? And hast thou forgotten even for a mo- 
ment that He has the power and the will to speak 
words of comfort to thy soul ? Uplift thine eye to 
Him now, — even to Jesus the Glorified and the 
Exalted ; and ask Him to send thee consolation 
and peace. Behold the mansion which He has pre- 
pared for thee in the midst of His own abode. Be- 
hold it; and wonder, and praise. Cease thy mourn- 
ing, and tell thy tears to stop their flow. Yonder 
home of bliss was built for thee. Favored mortal, 
canst thou now find it in thy heart to murmur or re- 
pine ? Thou art journeying to the land where there 
is no more vexation, and no more anxiety, and no 
more sorrow. What to thee are the troubles of 
earth, when thou knowest that all of them will 
soon be swallowed up by heavenly joys ? Jesus, 
thy sympathizing Saviour, shows thee what His 
love will bestow upon thee ; and, while He points 



72 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. - 

to thy promised inheritance, He bids thee cast all 
thy care upon Him, and wipe the drops of anguish 
from thine eyes. 

Believer in Jesus, rejoice in the consciousness that, 
be thy trouble what it may, whether now or in the 
future, the exalted Mediator and great High Priest 
has a fellow-feeling for all thine infirmity and suf- 
fering and woe. When there are none on earth to 
whom thou canst repair for sympathy, thou mayst 
go to Him in the full assurance that the prayer of 
thy faith will be heard. Never yield to despon- 
dency, then, even though thy spirit be overbur- 
dened with its grief. Let distress and anguish 
come, if they will : 

" Still despair not : there is One 

To whom sad hearts have often gone. 

Though rich the gifts for which they pray, 
None ever come unblest away. 

Then, though all earthly ties be riven, 

Still smile : Thou hast a Friend in Heaven." 

Yes, brethren beloved of the Lord, in whatever 
shape trouble attacks us, we may always draw con- 
solation from the thought that we have an High 
Priest that is " touched with the feeling of our in- 
firmities", and will never suffer us to mourn un- 
cheered and alone. The reflection that Jesus 






• A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 73 

wept on earth, and that His compassion is yet 
unchanged, will ever afford a solace to our bruised 
and wounded hearts. 

Oh, what a Comforter this Saviour is ! For more 
than eighteen centuries has He been soothing every 
variety of grief, and He has relieved trouble in 
every form which it has assumed. If the sympa- 
thy of a human friend can lighten, as we know it 
does, the load of our distress, how much more re- 
lief, and how much sweeter, may we obtain from 
the sympathy of Him who is God and has all the 
resources of the universe at His command ? Think 
of the boundlessness of His compassion, and re- 
joice. Consider the fact of His coming from Heaven 
to earth to "heal the broken-hearted, and to com- 
fort all that mourn." He loved His fellow-men ; 
and He invited all of them who felt weary and 
heavy-laden to come to Him and accept of perfect 
rest. But chiefly did He show to His immediate 
friends the warmth and depth of His attachment. 
The disciples to whom He revealed the mysteries 
of His kingdom, could testify to us of the power of 
that affection which, having loved once, loveth to 
the end. Remember how He enlivened their faith 
when they began to doubt, how He dissipated their 
fears, how He endured their willfulness and" their 



74 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

waywardness, and how He even forgave their de- 
sertion of Him in His hour of need. Though they 
often abused His kindness, He loved them still, and 
loved them always. He loved them while He was 
tried and tempted in the flesh ; He loved them 
when quivering in the agonies of death ; He loved 
them after He had risen from the tomb. The weep- 
ing Mary He comforted ; to the desponding Apostles 
He came and spake the wordsL of salutation, "Peace 
be unto you" ; and, as He ascended in view of His 
disciples from Bethany into Heaven, He lifted up 
His hands and breathed upon them a parting but 
eternal benediction. He forgot them not when He 
took His seat upon the mediatorial throne, but sent 
down upon them in a copious and abiding outpour- 
ing the promised Holy Spirit, who should sanctify, 
and bless, and comfort them, and all His people, 
from age to age. 

This exalted Jesus of Nazareth is just the Com- 
forter whom we all need. There is a void within 
our hearts which He alone can fill ; and there are 
pantings and longings of the soul which He alone 
can satisfy. None is there but Him to whom we 
can lift up our eyes as unto the hill whence cometh 
our help. He is our Mediator, and our only Me- 
diator, for all time ; and He is a Mediator who re- 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 75 

gards us in His exaltation with the same solicitude, 
the same sympathy, and the same affection which 
He manifested to His disciples when He taber- 
nacled with them on earth. We know Him, and 
we acknowledge Him, and we rejoice in Him as 
the great High Priest who "ever liveth to make 
intercession for us" that love Him, and the sympa- 
thizing High Priest who is ever ready, when called 
on, to administer comfort to the sorrowing, to cure 
the sin-sick, and to make the wounded conscience 
whole. 

Am I now addressing one who is a backsliding, 
or a wavering, Christian ? If I am, let me en- 
treat him to think upon the tears of the compas- 
sionate Saviour. backslider ! waverer ! what 
art thou doing ? How is it that thou art turning 
again to the vanities of earth, when thou art aware 
that they are folly ; and when, having known 
something of the powers of the world to come, 
thou hast learned that they are sweet to the spir- 
itual taste and satisfying to the soul ? Thou art 
forgetting thy Redeemer, and estranging thyself 
from His sympathy and love. A family altar 
lying in ruins, a closet of prayer unvisited, a Bible 
neglected, the ordinances of the Sanctuary at- 
tended with irregularity and attended with indiffer- 



76 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUE. 

ence, unite in proving that thou art trampling the 
blood of the covenant beneath thy feet, and art 
madly flinging the happiness of Eternity away. 
" Is this thy kindness to thy Friend ?" Call to 
mind the weeping of Jesus in Bethany's grave- 
yard ; when, as He glanced down the long vista of 
coming ages, He saw the apostasy of every one 
who should desert Him, and rashly trifle with the 
once accepted riches of His grace. Think of the 
tears He then poured forth in the bitterness of His 
grief; and remember that among them all there 
may have been a tear for thee. Oh, that tear ! 
that precious tear of the Saviour's ! that tear 
forced up by anguish from His sympathizing heart ! 
shall it have been shed for thee in vain? Back- 
slider ! falterer ! stop in thy wayward and ruinous 
course, — stop, and reflect. Thinkest thou that 
Jesus has yet forgotten thee, or the tear He shed 
in thy behalf? Be assured, He has not. He is 
unchanged in His compassion for thee, though thou 
art sadly changed in thine affection for Him. He 
loves thee yet ; and, if weeping were possible in 
Heaven, He would weep over thee to-day. Come 
back from thy guilty strayings, and seek His for- 
giveness for thine ungrateful neglect. Return, 
and cast thyself upon His breast. See how His 



A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 77 

eye is melting with pity at thy condition, and see 
how He beckons thee to come and fall into His 
open arms. 

"Keturn, oh, wanderer, now return ; 
And wipe away the falling tear : 
'Tis Christ who says, ' No longer mourn' ; 
"lis Mercy's voice invites thee near." 

Perhaps I am addressing some hitherto obdu- 
rate soul that is now stirred with penitence at the 
thought of its long ingratitude towards the sym- 
pathizing Saviour ? Is the one that reads these 
pages a sin-burdened spirit that has been aroused 
at length to a sense of its guilt and its danger, and 
feels itself exposed, and justly exposed, to the 
wrath of a righteous God ? Mourner, whoever 
thou art, the sympathy of Jesus avails for thee. 
Believe this assurance, and act upon it, for it is 
true. Trust to His compassion, so abundant, so 
free ; and seek for pardon through the Saviour 
without delay. Look for Him now ; for, certain 
it is, thou hast, whether for time or for eternity, no 
other safe refuge, no other sure and solid hope. 

Mourner, take courage from the record of the 
tears shed by the grave of Lazarus ; and, going to 
Jesus at once, appeal to His compassion. Go, 
trembling with thy troubles ; go, with thy guilt 



78 A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR. 

and shame oppressed ; go, even though thy sins 
look like scarlet, and rise mountain-high above 
thee ; go, tell Him all, and beg for pardon and for 
celestial life. Tell Him of thy deep soul-longings 
after forgiveness ; tell Him of thy doubts and fore- 
bodings ; tell Him how thy heart is desolate and 
wretched, and how thou art seeking some token 
of His sympathizing love. Fear nothing : He will 
hear thee. He heard the plaint of the blind Bar- 
timeus, and He will surely listen to the story of 
thy woe. Plead His registered promise, "Him 
that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out" : 
plead it fervently, and thou wilt prevail. Go to 
Jesus now, while He is calling thee : go to Him 
just as thou art, all sinful, all unworthy, and throw 
thyself in life-long consecration at His feet. Then 
will He smile upon thee tenderly, and, uplifting 
in His embrace, impart to thee eternal consolation 
and eternal rest. 



$^H § e coyti. 



C|e Cera m |$fomtt ©liki 



" And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, 
saying, ' If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the 
things which belong nnto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine 
eyes.'"— Luke xix. 41, 42. 



As He reached 



The summit's breezy pitch, the Saviour raised 
His calm blue eye : There stood Jerusalem ! 

. . There she stood ; 

Jerusalem, — the city of His love, 

Chosen from all the earth; Jerusalem, — 

That knew him not, and had rejected Him ; 

Jerusalem — for whom He came to die ! — 

The shouts redoubled from a thousand lips 

At the fair sight ; the children leaped, and sang 

Louder hosannas ; the clear air was filled 

With odor from the trampled olive-leaves ; — 

But Jesus wept. . . . - . . He only saw 

Jerusalem, the chosen, the loved, the lost I 

He only felt that for her sake His life 

Was vainly given ; and, in his pitying love, 

The sufferings that would clothe the heavens in black 

Were quite forgotten. — Was there ever love, 

In earth or Heaven, equal unto this ? 

K P. Willis. 



JOeepixig obeir ^eiriis^Jety. 



Jerusalem from Mount Olivet on the Morning oe the Triumphal 
Procession — The Saviour's Pause, and His Lamentation over the 
Doomed City— Pathetic Grandeur oe the Scene— Jesus Wept over 
Jerusalem on account oe her Abused Privileges and her Conse- 
quent Punishment — The People Foredoomed, yet might have been 
Blest — Picture oe Jerusalem's Happiness and Dignity, had Jesus 

BEEN KeCEIVED AS THE MESSIAH— THE OPPOSITE AND TRUE PICTURE — 

Solemn Tenderness of the Saviour's Plaint — Sorrow of the Re- 
deemer over Jerusalem's Downfall and the Nation's Fate — Their 
Spiritual Perdition the Chief Cause of His Lamentation — The 
Example of Jesus Teaches us to Weep over those of our Neigh- 
borhood who Obey not God and Christ— Our Duty to Save Them 
by our Tears Coupled with Personal Efforts in their Behalf. 



esns Stwjinj obtr fmtsalm. 



The sun had risen upon Jerusalem, and was 
lighting up her house-tops, and her turrets and 
battlements, and the roof of her temple, with the 
blaze of his cheerful beams. Zion and Moriah 
and Acra were glistening in his brightness ; and 
the mountains that girt " the holy city" were glow- 
ing beneath the splendor of his rays. The stars of 
the night had faded out ; and the mists of the night 
had melted from around the hills and from the vales 
which lay below. The calm pool of Bethesda was 
beginning to shine as silver under the beams of the 
early sun ; while the waters of Kedron sparkled 
like diamonds as they trickled down the ravine 
which divides Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. 
The radiance of a lovely spring morning poured it- 
self around the city of David, — a radiance whose 
brilliancy and warmth were tempered by a west- 
erly wind that had come over the plain of Sharon 



84 JESUS WEEPING 

from off the cool surface of the sea. The trees 
which stood upon the mountains, and along their 
sides, and at their base, and in the valleys, were 
waving with gladness in the breeze, and seemed to 
rejoice at the pleasantness of the opening day. 

And now there began to be heard the hum of a 
city population awake from its sleep, and entering 
upon the varied activities of life. All Jerusalem 
was astir ; for the hour of the morning sacrifice was 
past, and the duties of the day had begun. But while 
this busy scene was visible in the houses, and the 
streets, and the public places, of the city, a livelier 
drama was being enacted on the summit of the 
Mount of Olives. Jesus of Nazareth had arrived 
with a multitude of His disciples from the village 
of Bethany, and was about to make His triumphal 
entry into Jerusalem. He had reached the top of 
the eminence which overlooks the valley of Jehosh- 
aphat and the hills beyond it. As he gazed around 
Him amid the splendor of that hallowed morn, He 
beheld not only the life-teeming city that sat be- 
low Him, but the blue mountains of Ephraim on 
the north and west, and the green hill country of 
Judea on the south, and the white summits of Moab 
in the east. Little, however, cared He just then 
for the grand natural prospect that was spread out 



OVER JERUSALEM. 85 

before Him ; for that was not an hour which He 
could give to such a contemplation. He was pro- 
ceeding to Jerusalem as her King, — going thither 
in the early part of that week whose close was to 
find Him crucified and in His grave. But the 
sounds which rose about Him were the sounds of 
triumph, and not of lamentation ; and the acts that 
were performed before Him were the acts of hom- 
age, and not the last sad offices which prepared His 
body for the tomb. And now were heard loud 
shoutings of joy upon the top of Olivet, as the mul- 
titude strewed the path of the Saviour with their 
garments and with branches of palm ; and mighty 
was that burst of rapture which shook the hills 
around, when they cried out in the intensity of their 
adoration, "Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed 
is He that cometh in the name of the Lord : ho- 
sanna in the highest !" 

It is only for a moment that Jesus pauses upon 
the summit of the Mount of Olives. He soon be- 
gins to descend, heralded by the throng who would 
elevate Him to the throne of His father David. 
His eye is fixed upon the city ; and, as He thinks 
of her lost condition, there is sorrow in His heart. 
He has not gone far, when He checks the colt on 
which He rides, and gives vent to the feelings that 



86 JESUS WEEPING 

trouble His soul. He sees no longer the animated 
faces of His disciples ; He hears no longer the 
hymns of their praise ; for His whole mind is ab- 
sorbed in the fate of the people who have rejected 
His teachings, and are soon to deepen their guilt 
past hope of forgiveness by hanging Him on the 
cross. Often before has He approached Jerusalem 
by the same road, and looked upon it from the same 
spot ; but never before have such emotions agitated 
His breast. He knows that it is the last week of 
her trial ; and He foresees that she will certainly 
be condemned. His prophetic glance lights upon 
the gathering storm, and the doom both temporal 
and eternal which is to fall upon the city of His 
love. Therefore it is that, when He stops and gazes 
on Jerusalem, He weeps the tear of sorrow and di- 
vine compassion ; and therefore it is that we hear 
from Him that mournful plaint which lays bare the 
agony of His heart, " If thou hadst known, even 
thou, at least in this thy day, the things which be- 
long unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes. 9 ' 

There is another occasion on which the Saviour 
is represented as weeping ; whereby it is proved 
to us that He was subject to the human feelings 
which move ourselves, and is therefore become a 



OVER JERUSALEM. 87 

heavenly Mediator and High Priest just suited to 
our wants. That occasion was the death of His 
friend Lazarus, at whose grave Jesus wept in uni- 
son with the sorrowing Martha and Mary. There 
He shed tears of sympathy. Here we find Him 
shedding tears of disappointed affection and of 
mourning over those who desired none of His coun- 
sel and despised His reproof. 

Some there are whose theology is cast in so 
rough a mould, that they are not pleased with 
this record of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem ; and 
they see in it something not altogether harmonious 
with the inflexibility of the divine decrees. So 
wedded are they to their ideas about God's pur- 
poses that they are almost inclined to believe 
that Jesus ought not to have shed the tears of 
grief over sinners who were hopelessly undone. 
But this is carrying the metaphysics of Divin- 
ity too far. Rather would we range ourselves 
with those who look upon the narrative as one of 
the most pathetic of all that are related in the 
Scripture, and as not less true to the demands of 
a wholesome Theology than to the teachings of 
Nature. There is no scene more touching than 
this in all the New Testament, if we except the 
scene of Gethsemane and that of Golgotha. It is 



88 JESUS WEEPING 

almost impossible to read the record, brief as it is, 
without being conscious of a powerful sympathy 
with the Saviour prompting us to pour out with 
Him the drops of grief. We feel that His was a 
love that was deep and strong ; since, while it 
yielded to the demands of justice, it could not re- 
frain from mourning over the fate of those who 
were to perish : and we rejoice to think that the 
same love fills His bosom now, exalted as He is to 
universal dominion, and gives assurance to those 
who are resolved to die in their sins that they are 
going down to the pit of the lost wrapped as it 
were in the fragrance of His lamentations. No 
other weeping teachea such a lesson as does the 
weeping of Christ over Jerusalem ; for that must 
be agony indeed at which the Son of God is com- 
pelled to weep, when His own sufferings, now so 
nigh, could not wring from Him the tribute of a 
single tear. 

It is not strange that Jesus wept when He gazed 
upon Jerusalem, and remembered her exalted priv- 
ileges and her approaching doom. It was a city 
that had been highly favored of God upon which 
He looked down from the Mount of Olives. He 
called to mind the circumstances that had attended 
its foundation ; and He recollected how it had 



OVER JERUSALEM. 89 

grown to be the seat of the theocracy, and how its 
glory had been spoken of among all nations. As 
He cast His eye upon Zion, He thought of the 
palaces of its former kings. As He cast His eye 
on Moriah, He saw the magnificence of the temple, 
covered with plates of gold, ornamented with 
precious marbles, and looming forth under the rays 
of the sun like a " mountain of snow studded with 
jewels." In this temple, as He knew, dwelt the 
living God ; and when that God should depart from 
it, the divine protection would no longer be vouch- 
safed unto Israel. Here had the daily sacrifice 
been offered up for a thousand years, and from this 
sacred sanctuary prayer had often ascended ac- 
ceptably unto the Lord. The city had been the 
residence of many whom Jehovah had recognized 
as His servants ; and it was the capital and the 
divinely appointed worshipping-place of the land 
which Jehovah had blessed, and had filled with the 
mementos of His presence and His protecting 
power. 

Jesus remembered all this ; but He remembered 
also how every one of these privileges had been 
abused. The miracles which Jehovah wrought of 
old had been forgotten; the Law delivered by 
Moses, and the instructions of holy men who spake 



90 JESUS WEEPING 

as they were moved from above, had been either 
corrupted or disregarded ; and even the teachings 
of the Messiah had been delivered to a hard- 
hearted and gainsaying people. For more than 
three years had the holy Teacher who now wept 
over the city striven to lead its inhabitants to a 
knowledge of the truth, and to make them receive 
Him in His true character as a spiritual Saviour. 
He had instructed them out of the Law as one 
having authority ; but they were content with 
saying in wonder, " How knoweth this man letters, 
having never learned ?" He had spoken to them 
of the free and full salvation which He was em- 
powered to confer; but they only answered in 
their pride, "Have any of the rulers or of the 
Pharisees believed on Him?" He had warned 
them ; but they had turned away in anger : He 
had entreated them ; but they had only made their 
necks the stiffer in rebellion. All vainly had He 
toiled for them, and suffered for them, and prayed 
for them ; and now just as vainly was He about to 
make Himself an offering for them, and for the re- 
demption of a guilty world. He foresaw that as 
to them His sacrifice would be useless ; nay, that 
it would only render their condemnation the more 
terrible and the more sure. The blood of the for- 



OVER JERUSALEM. 91 

mer prophets was calling out for vengeance against 
them ; and to this there was soon to be added the 
cry of the blood that should stream from the cross. 
He perceived that the fate of the city was inevit- 
able ; and He could not but weep over the sad vis- 
ion of its fearful downfall. He called to mind 
what Jerusalem might have been, had her people 
recognized Him as their King ; and then in con- 
trast with this, He looked forward, and saw what 
was soon to be her dreadful doom. No wonder 
that the sight unnerved Him ; and no wonder that, 
in the anguish of His soul, He wept, and said, " If 
thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy 
day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! but 
now they are hid from thine eyes." 

It is true that Jesus knew from the beginning 
that the Jewish nation would reject Him, and bring 
down a merited ruin upon their own heads ; and He 
was well aware that every step He took, and all 
that He said, was arranged upon the pre-supposi- 
tion that they would refuse to acknowledge Him 
as the Messiah, and would even put Him to a 
shameful death. None the less, however, was He 
also assured that, had they accepted Him in His 
true character, and not blinded themselves to their 
destruction, then would their " peace have been as 



92 JESUS WEEPING 

a river, and their righteousness as the waves of the 
sea." The structure of the sentence which He 
utters in His lamentation shows that He paused 
for a moment in the midst of it, and thought upon 
the happiness that would have fallen to the lot of 
His countrymen, had they only hearkened to Him 
and desired a knowledge of His ways. " If thou 
hadst known," He says, " even thou, at least in 
this thy day, the things which belong to thy 
peace", — "then," He means to intimate, "then it 
would have been well with thee, Jerusalem ; and 
thou shouldst have been the praise and the salva- 
tion of the world. Then, Zion, city of the liv- 
ing God, thou shouldst have been glad in Me as thy 
Saviour and Redeemer ; for I, even I, would have 
comforted all thy waste places, and have made thy 
wilderness like Eden, and thy desert like the gar- 
den of the Lord : yea, the glory of thy God should 
have risen upon thee, and Gentiles would have 
come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of 
thy rising." 

It is pleasing to picture to ourselves, as Jesus 
pictured it to Himself, what might have been the 
result to Judea and to all the earth, had the Is- 
raelites as with one voice acknowledged Him to be 
the Messiah sent from God, and rendered Him the 



OVER JERUSALEM. 93 

willing worship of their hearts. In such an event, 
the city of David would probably have stood in its 
beauty and strength to the present day, and all na- 
tions would now flow into it " to the house of the 
God of Jacob"; for then "out of Zion would go 
forth the Law" in a sense more literal than that of 
prophecy, " and the word of the Lord from Jeru- 
salem." 

Even under these circumstances, however, it 
would still have been necessary for Jesus to die ; 
but His death would not have been brought about 
by the iniquity of His countrymen. He would 
have gone, perhaps, into the city and the temple 
during this last week of His ministry in the flesh, 
not to speak words of condemnation to a guilt- 
hardened race, but to tell to open ears and happy 
hearts the story of God's love, and to explain to 
all the mystery of redemption. He would have 
pointed out the necessity of His sacrifice as an 
atonement for the sins of His nation and of the 
world ; and then, amid the tears of a sympathizing 
people, He would have publicly devoted Himself to 
death, perhaps upon the Mount of Olives in the full 
view of all, or perhaps upon the great altar of sac- 
rifice in the court of the temple ; where the sword 
of justice might have visibly gleamed forth from 



94 JESUS WEEPING 

Heaven and bathed itself in His blood. Then 
would He have been laid away in sad and solemn 
state in the tomb ; but only to rise in majesty on 
the third day, and assume the personal dominion 
of Judea and of the world. 

In such a case, the city of David would have 
become the excellency of many generations, the joy 
of the whole earth ; and from her would have pro- 
ceeded forth a righteousness which would long since 
have spread to the confines of the globe, and made 
all nations yield themselves in gladness to her mild 
and peaceful sway. Jerusalem would never have 
been trodden down by the Gentiles, and her land 
would not have been made the land of desolation. 
Had her people only hearkened to the voice of the 
Messiah, Judea would this day have been, it is 
likely, the first in every respect among the nations 
of the earth ; and she would have been the coun- 
try to which the whole world would be paying a 
joyful homage, as the cradle of Christianity, the 
seat of religion, and the chosen residence of Him 
who is "King of kings and Lord of lords." 

This is a pleasing picture to look upon ; but it 
becomes sombre and sad when we remember that 
it does not correspond to the truth. Jerusalem 
would not listen to the things which belonged to 



OVER JERUSALEM. 95 

her peace ; and therefore there came a destruction 
upon her proud palaces, and her gorgeous temple, 
yea, and her very foundations, that has made her 
name a by-word and a hissing for hundreds of 
years. Jesus had in view this withering desolation 
as He paused in His descent from the Mount of 
Olives ; and the sight of it drew the tears of sor- 
row from His eyes. He would have turned it away, 
if He could ; but He could not without doing vio- 
lence to the claims of that justice which with Him 
were as strong as the yearnings of His love. He 
could mourn over a perversity which was bent upon 
self-destruction ; but He could not pardon it after 
it had rejected the calls of Mercy till the day of 
Mercy was over. He looked, and saw Jerusalem 
surrounded by enemies that would burn her build- 
ings, slaughter her people, and east down her walls 
in the dust. There was no averting her doom ; for 
her inhabitants, after being exhorted in vain to 
practise the righteousness that God required, were 
now, as He knew, about to fill up the cup of their 
guilt to the brim by crucifying the One who was 
sent to deliver them from their sins. He beheld 
before Him the imagery of a wrath such as had 
never descended on any nation; and His benevolent 
heart ached to its very core. As He looked upon 



96 JESUS WEEPING 

the misery which was to roll down upon Judea, 
every feeling of tender recollection was stirred 
within Him ; and He could not but utter that no- 
table expression of sorrow which burst forth in 
tremulous tones of plaintiveness from His inmost 
soul. 

These utterances of Jesus on the Mount of Ol- 
ives are as touching as those which He spoke a few 
days later, on leaving the temple for the last time, 
when He exclaimed in words that were " musical in 
their sadness/' u Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often 
would I have gathered thy children together, even 
as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, — 
and ye would not !" Just before this He had ad- 
dressed the people in terms not only of sorrowful 
indignation but of stern rebuke, — menacing them 
with woe after woe, and telling them that upon that 
very generation should vengeance be taken for all 
the righteous blood which had been shed by them 
and by their fathers. It is at the close of these 
strong denunciations that He suddenly changes His 
tone from vehement oratory to the mild eloquence 
of plaintive grief, and concludes His harangue of 
awful thunder with that sweet lamentation over 
Jerusalem, which no one who has read it can ever 
forget. 



OVER JERUSALEM. 97 

Quite as tender, however, is the plaint which He 
utters when pausing in pensiveness amid His tri- 
umphal descent from Olivet, and weeping tears of 
distress over the fate of the city which He loved 
with all the ardor of His divine heart. There is 
something very solemn in that anguish which came 
upon Him in His hour of triumph, and made Him 
inattentive for the time to the acclamations which 
were sounded about Him by the multitude that 
cried, " Hosanna, hosanna ; blessed is He that 
cometh in the name of the Lord !" And the solem- 
nity of this anguish imparts a solemnity to the 
^words which it forced from the Redeemer's lips, 
and sent down to us as an utterance of sorrow 
which, born itself of tears, is able to give birth to 
tears. There are few expressions so mournful in 
all the Bible. There is a melancholy in it that 
stirs the soul like the sad minstrelsy of woe. No 
funeral dirge is more plaintive ; and no funeral 
music makes the heart-strings to vibrate more ten- 
derly than clo these words of touching grief, — " If 
thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy 
day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! — 
but now they are hid from thine eyes." 

You will not wonder at the sorrow herein dis- 
played by Jesus, if you will but remember that 

5 



98 JESUS WEEPING 

His prophetic eye was turned upon the scenes of 
Jerusalem's downfall and the wretchedness which 
was to follow. He saw Her wasted and desolate, 
— not one stone left upon another, and her inhab- 
itants either weltering in their gore, or scattered 
over the face of the globe. The predictions spok- 
en by Moses and by the prophets were, He per- 
ceived, very soon to be fulfilled ; and there was 
to be accomplished also the yet more distinct 
prediction which He Himself intended soon to 
utter. That doleful cry, "His blood be upon 
us and upon our children !" sounded even now in 
His ears ; and He was certain that such an impre-* 
cation must bring down before long a direful ven- 
geance upon them who would send it up to Heaven 
in their mad impiety and guilt. Already He heard 
the tramp of the Roman legions, and the shriek of 
the Roman eagles hasting to their feast of flesh. 
He saw the beloved city beleaguered by a Gentile 
host, and her. crowded inhabitants hemmed in on 
every side. He beheld Titus, the man of destiny, 
casting his first proud look upon Jerusalem from 
the hill Scopas, and then conducting the movements 
of the siege that ended in the city's overthrow. In 
His vision the Saviour looked upon Jerusalem as the 
prey of anarchy, of famine, and of the ravages of 



OVER JERUSALEM. 99 

murderous war. He saw her houses filled with the 
dead and the dying, her streets flowing with blood, 
her towers overturned, her temple in flames, the 
fortifications of Acra and of Zion stormed, and all 
the city a scene of calamity, of carnage, and of 
death. 

Yet farther did the Saviour look ; and He beheld 
not only the overthrow under Titus, but the final 
overthrow in the reign of Adrian (135 a. d.), after 
which the Israelites w r ere forbidden even to ap- 
proach Jerusalem, and were kept out almost in a 
mass for two centuries from every part of the 
land of Judea. He gazed upon this last catastro- 
phe in all its horrors ; and He beheld at the same 
time the long series of abuses to which His coun- 
trymen would have to submit for the many weary 
centuries of their banishment from their ancestral 
home. 

Such was the sight which passed across the vis- 
ion of the Saviour, and made Him shed the tears 
of grief. Jerusalem rose up before Him as the 
spoiled, the desolate, the bound in chains. How 
could He do otherwise than weep, even as a patriot 
mourning over the desolation of His native land ; 
and much more as a Redeemer who had come to 
seek and to save a nation that was spiritually lost 



100 ■ JESUS WEEPING 

and condemned to the sufferings of eternal woe ? 
It was natural that He should grieve, as His im- 
agination pictured forth the Roman driving his 
plowshare over the soil where once the temple had 
towered in its beauty and pride, and the Saracen 
building on its site a Mohammedan mosque; and it 
was meet that His soul should be stirred within 
Him, when He beheld Jerusalem's last conqueror, 
the stupid Turk, upturning her very ruins, violat- 
ing the sacredness of her tombs, systematically 
insulting the descendants of those who in former 
days possessed Judea's realms,, and treating with 
barbarian rudeness the followers of Him who is at 
once the prophet of Nazareth and the Redeemer of 
the world. 

Jesus mourned over this ; but much more did 
He mourn over the spiritual perdition which was 
to be poured upon Jerusalem and upon all the land. 
Observe the depth of His emotion, the keenness of 
His anguish ; and you will perceive that the tears 
which the Saviour shed did not flow simply because 
the gorgeous temple on which He gazed from the 
slope of Olivet was soon to be burned with fire ; 
or because the walls, and towers, and battlements, 
and palaces, of the city which shone before Him in 
splendor were soon to be leveled with the ground ; 



OVER JERUSALEM. 101 

or because its inhabitants, then so full of life and 
so thoughtless of the future, were soon to struggle 
in the throes of physical death, or to be driven 
forth as a despised people among all the nations of 
the earth. There was a stronger reason than any 
of these for the Redeemer s grief, and a nobler 
source from which the tears of His compassion 
streamed. His lamentation sprung from the bitter 
consciousness that the woe that was coming upon 
the Israelites was a woe which would for ever affect 
the happiness of their souls. He foresaw the con- 
demnation that would pass upon them in the day 
of the final judgment, of which the earthly judg- 
ment that was first to appear would be only a faint 
and feeble type. He knew that the sins of His 
countrymen would certainly plunge them into the 
gulf of perdition ; and He could not but deplore 
aloud their bitter fate. The whole nation was 
posting on to ruin, for it had long been living in 
rebellion against its Maker and doing constant de- 
spite to the Spirit of His grace. The cup of its 
iniquity was almost full. One deed more, — the 
darkest deed of all, — and the Lord, provoked be- 
yond endurance, would, as Christ was aware, dis- 
charge the vials of His resentment upon a people 
whom neither stern dealing, nor kind treatment, 



102 JESUS WEEPING 

had been able to keep in their allegiance, or recall 
from the wanderings of their guilt. Oh, it was an 
awful retribution which was in sight; and, when 
He gazed upon it, Jesus, forgetting Himself as it 
were, gave way to a flood of compassionate tears, 
while the tender words of sorrow fell from His 
lips, " If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in 
this thy day, the things which belong unto thy 
peace ! — but now they are hid from thine eyes." 

Thus, Christian brethren, has the Saviour set us an 
example ; and, if we will learn from Him, we shall 
be filled with anxiety for the salvation of those 
whom we know to be exposed to the punishment 
of eternal death. And it does seem to me that we 
should at all times, and chiefly now, be deeply con- 
cerned in particular for the fate of the neighbor- 
hood in which we reside. If we were assured that 
there is coming on a pestilence to desolate our 
homes, we should grieve at the announcement, and 
would be ready to weep in view of the suffering 
and anguish that are at hand. Why is it, then, 
that we are so indifferent to the spiritual fate of 
our friends and neighbors, when we know, as we 
do, that a disease is preying upon every one of 
them, which, if not checked, will for ever destroy 
their souls ? Can we be Christians, and yet remain 



OVER JERUSALEM. 103 

careless about this state of things, and forget the 
danger of the thousands who are living among us 
totally regardless of their eternal interests and of 
the claims of their God ? I am sure that if the 
Saviour, again manifesting Himself in the flesh, 
should come and look upon that part of our land 
in which we dwell, He would weep over it as He 
wept over Jerusalem of old. He would weep to 
see so many that never hear Him spoken of except 
in blasphemy, and so many that care nothing for 
His claims, and so many that are daily hardening 
themselves against the calls of His grace ; and He 
would weep to think that the whole of them, — the 
openly rebellious to His authority, and the neglect- 
ers of His salvation, and they who, knowing and 
feeling their duty, stand out in an increasingly stout 
resistance against Him, — yes, the whole of them, 
all that obey not His gospel, are hurrying on to- 
gether in their blind infatuation to an eternity that 
is wretched and undone. Oh, brethren, if Jesus 
would weep over the ruined condition of these our 
acquaintances, and our friends, and our relatives, 
how is it that we do not shed for them the tears 
of grief; and how is it that we do not beseech 
them with all the earnestness of an agonizing heart 
to be forthwith reconciled to God ? The Saviour 



104 JESUS WEEPING 

is anxious in their behalf; and the angels are anx- 
ious in their behalf. And yet they are dying, eter- 
nally dying, because, perhaps, we are not suffi- 
ciently careful to warn them, and do not seek as 
perseveringly as we ought to pluck them as brands 
from the burnings of Gehenna. Some of these 
perishing sinners are our bosom friends, — our broth- 
ers, our sisters, our husbands, our wives, our chil- 
dren ; and, as day after day passes by, and month 
after month, and year after year, they are, many 
of them, becoming only the more hardened to all 
admonition, and the more indifferent to the invita- 
tions of the Saviour's love, and the more neglectful 
of the kind offer of eternal life. Our entreaties 
with them and our prayers for them have been of 
no avail ; and they are at this moment forcing their 
way through every barrier down to perdition, and 
heaping up to themselves wrath against the day of 
wrath. 

Consider how pitiable is the condition of these 
neglecters of the Gospel. The Lord's anger is hot 
against them ; and we can not tell how soon He 
may close the door of mercy, and leave them a 
prey to the adversary of their souls. Surely we 
ought to pour forth tears of anguish over them, 
and beseech them to flee from the ire of a sin- 



OVER JERUSALEM. 105 

hating and sin-punishing God. Some of them are 
yet young, and are anticipating many years of 
pleasure; while at this very moment, perhaps, 
stern Death is putting his finger on the pulse of 
their life to still its beatings for ever. Some of 
them have reached middle age, and are yet so bus- 
ied with the things around them that they give 
hardly a thought to the solemn Hereafter 5 while 
even now, it may be, the grave is opening to re- 
ceive them in its cold embrace. Some of them have 
reached the very threshold of Eternity, and are 
still looking only at the scenes of earth ; while it 
is certain that in a few more days they must hear 
their summons to the bar of judgment. Now, over 
the whole of these impenitent ones ruin impends, 
as we know ; but, God forgive us ! how feeble are 
our efforts, united or individual, to rescue them 
from their threatened doom ! Alas ! we seem al- 
most indifferent to their fate ; for scarcely a hand 
is stretched out in their relief, scarcely a heart is 
warm for their welfare, and scarcely a cheek is wet 
for them with the compassionate tear. 

Think, brethren, think of the condition of these 
beings whom the Lord created for happiness, but 
who are madly consigning themselves to everlast- 
ing despair. You ought to pity them, to weep for 

5* 



106 JESUS WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM. 

them ; for they are without God, and without 
Christ, and without hope. Oh, can you not shed 
over them the tears of grief, — such tears as Jesus 
poured forth from His compassionate heart ? Heav- 
en and earth might weep to see them walking in 
their blindness over liquid fires, and to see them 
insensible from their deafness to the sounds of con- 
demnation that are muttering sullenly in the hot 
caverns below. If Heaven and earth might weep, 
surely you ought, each of you, to break forth in the 
words of Jeremiah's mournful plaint, " Oh that my 
head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of 
tears, that I might weep day and night for the 
slain of the daughter of my people !" Lament, ye 
Christian men and women : lament, not for your- 
selves, but for those whom you see hasting on to 
destruction. Stop them with your tears ; and im- 
plore them to think of God, of Eternity, of the 
world of bliss, of the dark realm of woe. Go forth 
weeping, every one of you : turn sinners from the 
error of their ways by your earnest supplications ; 
and they whom you convert shall shine as stars in 
the crown of your rejoicing for ever and for ever. 



I fj e I e^ir$ of § o Sr Sr o b)« 



The Example of Jesus a Teaching Instrumentality— His Weep- 
ing over Jerusalem an Eminent Lesson — The Redeemer's Self- 
forgetfulness in all hls acts — this trait beautifully shown by 
His Lamentation on Olivet — His Own Griefs Forgotten in Jerusa- 
lem's Coming Woes — Tears of the Saviour Indicative of His In- 
tense Benevolence — His Love even to His Enemies and Murderers 
—Lesson of Kindness and Gentle Dealing Taught by His Example 
— This Benevolence not Confined, but World-wide— Our Benevo- 
lence SHOULD BE AS FREE AND AS LARGE— TEARS OF JESUS MANIFEST 

His Deep Solicitude for Man's Salvation— In this Anxiety we 
should Share— Why Christians Weep over the Impenitent. 



Cfacjjhtp of Christ's Borrowing C*ara. 



The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are so much 
the more powerful because they are handed down 
to us, not only clothed in the words which He spoke, 
but exemplified in the whole tenor and conduct of 
His life. The religion He was sent to proclaim be- 
came incarnate in Himself ; and He lived out in 
His own history every precept which He has en- 
joined upon them who wish to be made co-heirs 
with Him of the inheritance that is unfading and 
eternal. Hence it is that His example is put be- 
fore us for our imitation ; and we are encouraged 
to hope that, if we copy after it, and let the same 
mind be in us which was in Him, we shall be 
changed into His likeness, and be made partakers 
of His glory and His joy. 

And it is most certainly our duty, as it ought to 
be our chief pleasure, to seek conformity to the im- 
age of the Saviour, by walking as He walked, and 



110 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST'S 

thinking as He thought. If we would learn what 
becomes us in any and every condition, it is only 
necessary that we look to Hiin who is the Apostle 
and High Priest of our profession, and by imitat- 
ing whom we know that we shall approach nearer 
and nearer to that perfection unto which we are 
commanded to aspire. Thus may we learn from 
His example humility, — when we think of Him as 
u being found in fashion as a man/' and cheerfully 
associating with the sinful, the degraded, and the 
lost ; and we may learn obedience to our earthly 
superiors, — when we think of Him as " subject" to 
His parents up to His thirtieth year ; and we may 
learn contentment with our allotment in the world, 
— when we think of Him as a homeless wanderer 
who often knew not where to lay His head ; and 
we may learn active and unremitting benevolence, 
— when we think of Him as devoting the entire 
term of His ministry to deeds of kindness and 
love ; and we may learn fervor of devotion, — 
when we think of Him as spending whole nights 
in prayer ; and we may learn submission to the 
will of God under every dispensation of His prov- 
idence, — when we think of Him as bowing meekly 
to the purposes of His Father in Gethsemane's gar- 
den, and drinking on Golgotha, and drinking with- 



SORROWING TEARS. Ill 

out complaint, the wine cup of His Father's retrib- 
utive wrath. 

There is no incident recorded in the Saviour's 
history that does not teach us lessons of value ; 
and this is peculiarly true of the narrative which 
tells us of His weeping over the city that had re- 
fused to receive Him as her Prophet, her Priest, 
and her King. Some of the most striking traits 
of His character are here brought out prominently 
into notice, and made to shine forth in a light as 
clear and soft as that of the sun's first morning rays. 
As we gaze upon this picture of sadness, and hear 
the plaint of Christ, we are struck by the whole 
scene as a wonderful exhibition of self-forgetful- 
ness, of intense and all-embracing benevolence, of 
a deep solicitude for man's salvation, and of an ear- 
nest sincerity that would save sinners, if possible, 
from the wretchedness of everlasting destruction. 

If we except Jesus of Nazareth, the world has 
never known a man perfectly free from the taint 
of selfishness, — one who has not sought his own 
happiness more eagerly and constantly than he has 
sought the happiness of others. In this respect 
the Saviour stands alone. Trace the course of His 
life from its beginning to its end ; and you will find 
everywhere in it the most convincing proof that He 



112 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST'S 

cared not to advance Himself, but was wholly ab- 
sorbed in promoting the welfare of those whom He 
came to seek and to save. His fixed and change- 
less aim was the working out of man s redemption; 
and never did He lose sight of it, though it led 
Him into ignominy., into suffering, and finally unto 
death. You know that He was offered worldly 
wealth, but refused it, that He might give spiritual 
riches to the spiritually poor ; and you know that 
He was offered worldly dominion, but refused it, 
that He might establish a heavenly reign under 
which the heavenly-minded should be made kings 
and priests unto God. There was placed before 
Him the glittering bait of ambition ; but the eye 
that beheld man's misery, and pitied it, could not 
be dazzled with the gleam of a bauble. There were 
spoken to Him the words of flattery ; but the ear 
that was open to the cry of distressed humanity, 
was deaf to so paltry an enticement. These things 
turned not Jesus for a moment out of the path 
which He had resolved to tread ; for it was not for 
Himself that He was living, and it was not for Him- 
self that He purposed to die. 

The trait of self-forgetfulness now spoken of, 
while it is seen in all the Saviour's doings and say- 
ings, manifests itself at times in a manner that fills 



SORROWING TEARS. 113 

us with wonder, and makes us say aloud in the in- 
tensity of our emotions, " Truly, this was the Son 
of God !" When we observe Him, wholly uncon- 
scious as it were of His native dignity, reclining 
at meat with hated publicans and notorious sinners, 
and addressing words of tenderness to those who 
have cast off all goodness from their lives and dis- 
like it in their hearts; when we perceive Him, 
even at a time in which men are seeking to show 
Him unwonted attention, turning away from them 
to put His hands upon the youth who desire His 
blessing ; when we behold Him on the occasion of 
His last Passover comforting His disciples, while 
His own sufferings are totally forgotten ; when we 
hear Him, as He staggers beneath the weight of 
His cross, saying to the women who lament His 
cruel fate, u Weep not for Me, but weep for your- 
selves and your children"; when, finally, we see 
Him even in His death agony anxiously mindful ot 
the matron who gave Him birth, and commending 
her to the friend that had lain on His bosom ; 
when, I say, our attention is called to these amaz- 
ing instances of the Saviour's self-forgetfulness, we 
are thrilled with admiration, and can not but wish 
that we too might thus rise superior to our imagi- 
nary personal interests, and lose ourselves as com- 



114 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST'S 

pletely as did He in the work to which we are 
divinely appointed. 

Feelings like these rise up within us in a welling 
tide, when, in particular, we contemplate the self- 
forgetfulness exhibited by our Lord as He checked 
His progress down the Mount of Olives, and, cast- 
ing over Jerusalem a look of sadness, let fall for 
her the tears of grief. There He stood in the hour 
of His triumph, while the expressions of homage 
were poured out before Him, and the acts of hom- 
age were busily performed ; there He stood, and 
bowed His head, and wept. These which He shed 
were not the tears of mortified pride, called forth 
by His knowledge of the final rejection He would 
meet with from His countrymen ; and they were 
not the tears of complaint toward God, because 
God had imposed upon Him a burden too painful 
to bear. They were the tears of anxiety, of dis- 
appointed love, and of sympathizing grief. 

It was a mournful sight to behold- Jesus stop 
amid the universal joy, and gaze upon the city, 
and shed over it the tears of a sorrowful heart. 
As He looked down from Olivet, He saw the gar- 
den in which He was soon to sweat as it were 
great drops of blood ; and He saw the house of the 
high priest, where He was soon to be buffeted and 



SORROWING TEARS. 115 

mocked ; and He saw the palace of Herod, in 
which He was soon to be treated with indignity 
and scorn ; and He saw the prsetorium of Pilate, 
where He was soon to be unrighteously condemned 
and ignominiously scourged ; and He saw horrid 
Calvary, that gloomy u place of a skull", on which 
His body was soon to be racked with torture and 
the life-stream to gush in a torrent from His heart. 
He saw all these objects; but He saw as though 
He did not see. It was not the sight of them, sad 
as it was, that drew the tears of sorrow from Jesus' 
eyes. It was the prospect of Jerusalem's speedy 
downfall, and the thought of her people's everlast- 
ing ruin, that wrung from Him the drops of woe. 
The grand and venerable temple that loomed up 
before Him with its snow-white front and glitter- 
ing roof, the massive city walls with their battle- 
ments and turrets, and the whole of Jerusalem 
with her terraced gardens and her mansions of 
magnificence, were in a few short years to be to- 
tally overthrown and piled one upon another in 
heaps of desolation. He mourned over the coming 
destruction as a native-born Hebrew, to whom 
Jerusalem seemed as a the joy of the whole 
earth"; He mourned over it as a man of compas- 
sion, who could not look on misery without a sigh ; 



116 TEACHINGS OF C H R I S T ' S 

and He mourned over it as a divine Saviour , who 
would have rescued His people from endless rnin, 
had they been willing to accept His terms of sal- 
vation. He could not think of the approach of the 
threatened desolation, and remain unmoved; and 
therefore it was that He stopped in the midst of 
His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and, forgetting 
the woes that were preparing for Himself, cried out 
in the bitterness of His anguish over a city that 
might have been saved, but would not, " If thou 
hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, 
the things w T hich belong unto thy peace ! — but now 
they are hid from thine eyes." 

There is another lesson taught us by the sight 
of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem ; and it is a les- 
son of intense and all-embracing benevolence. It 
does not surprise us when we are informed that 
Christ wept at the grave of Lazarus ; for Lazarus 
was His friend. Nor would it surprise us, had we 
been told (as we are not) that He shed tears over 
the bier of the disconsolate widow's son, or over 
the body of Jairus' maiden daughter ; but it does 
surprise us to find it written that He wept at the 
fate of those who had repeatedly rejected His 
teachings, were about to do it again, and were 
moreover plotting even then to bring Him to a death 



SORROWING TEARS. 117 

of shame, But, if we are surprised, we are also 
gratified ; for thus are we led to look upon Jesus 
putting His own precept into practice, and showing 
us by His example how we may love our enemies, 
and bless them that revile us, and do good to them 
that hurl at us the darts of envy and persecution. 
In this remarkable conduct of the Saviour's we 
see displayed an intensity of benevolence to which 
all history can furnish no parallel. There is mani- 
fested a goodness of heart, a comprehensiveness of 
love, a depth and tenderness of sympathy, which 
can only be the affection of that Glod who gives 
His sun and His rain alike to the unjust and the 
just. This is philanthropy indeed, that can weep 
over the worst of foes, and grieve at a fate which 
their wickedness has well deserved. Already had 
the Saviour sacrificed much in behalf of His coun- 
trymen, — relinquishing every personal comfort to 
promote their highest happiness, and going about 
among them to do them good in the healing of their 
physical ailments, and in ministering to the wants 
of their souls. He had done this, not with that 
stern inflexibility of manner and that vehemence 
of speech which have always marked worldly- 
minded reformers, but in the calm gentleness of 
friendship, and in the mildness of love. Notwith- 



118 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST* S 

standing all, however, the nation had refused to re- 
ceive Him as the Messiah of Grod, had put Him 
away with ingratitude and contempt, and was very 
soon to insult Him more cruelly than ever, and to 
rob Him of His life. 

Jesus perceived the whole of their baseness ; and 
yet in full view of it He wept over the doom of 
those who had rejected Him, had trampled His 
kindness under foot, and despised His welhnteant 
admonitions and reproofs. The ingratitude of His 
fellow-Hebrews must have stung Him to the quick ; 
but it did not seal up the fountains of His pity and 
love. Nay, even the intenser wickedness they were 
about to perpetrate against Him, and all of which 
He distinctly foresaw, availed not to quench His 
compassion ; and the tears which He now poured 
forth over their guilt and its punishment were only 
an outgushing of that same sympathy which caused 
Him to pray for His murderers as they were nail- 
ing Him to the cross, and made Him instruct His 
disciples, after His resurrection, to begin at Jeru- 
salem when they entered upon the work of preach- 
ing repentance and remission of sins unto all the 
world. Though His countrymen had abused Him, 
and reviled Him, and misrepresented Him, and cast 
out His name as evil, He loved them still ; and, 



SORROWING TEARS. 119 

when He looked upon them and reflected on their 
lost condition, He felt as though He could bathe 
them in the tears of His outbursting grief. 

Jesus of Nazareth, the sinless, wept over the 
guilt of those who had wandered from the paths 
of right, and He gave way to lamentation in view 
of the woe that was to effect their destruction. 
He wept over them, though they had done Him 
most cruel wrong ; and He wept over them, though 
He was certain that their fate was fixed, and tears 
could be of no avail. How much more ousrht we, 
who are sinners ourselves, to weep over the errors 
of our fellow-sinners, when, as we know, the most 
of them have done us no harm, and when, as we 
have reason to believe, our tears, if seconded by 
our efforts, may bring them to repentance and to a 
reconciliation with God. We ought to grieve for 
our brethren who have slipped down into the pit- 
falls of sin, and, instead of reviling, we ought to 
extend to them the helping hand. Some of them, 
perhaps, are even now lamenting their folly ; and, 
if we would only show them sympathy, they would 
strive to recover themselves out of their present 
pitiful condition. There are many that err, many 
that sin ; and not a few of them are so hardened 
in their iniquity that it may seem useless to strive 



120 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST'S 

to reclaim them, and lead them in faith to Christ. 
But how know yon that they may not still be re- 
deemed ? Seek theni, and try npon them the 
power of tears. Deal gently with them; for they 
are weak, and frail, and sensitive to harshness and 
threats. Woo them with the tender words of love. 
Show them in kindness where it is they stand ; 
place death before their eyes, and judgment, and 
eternity ; and then implore them even with tears, 
if tears will flow, to flee from the wrath to come, 
and to lay hold on eternal life. Weep for them, 
when you pray in private in their behalf ; weep, 
if Nature tells yon, when you plead with them in 
person, and be not ashamed of exhibiting that kind 
of weakness which has often proved the magic of 
power when all besides has failed. 

This weeping of the Saviour over Jerusalem,- — 
over those who had most bitterly opposed the set- 
ting up of His spiritual kingdom, — is indicative of 
that wider benevolence which He has displayed to 
all the nations of the earth. It is true that Christ's 
personal ministry was confined to the Jews, and 
that His own labors, with hardly an exception, did 
not extend beyond the confines of " the lost sheep 
of the house of Israel." It is no less true, how- 
ever, that the end of all He did was to have saiva- 



SORROWING TEARS. 121 

tion preached in His name to every people upon 
the face of the globe. This was the object of His 
life and the object of His death. He came to re- 
deem the whole world, and not Judea alone, from 
the enthrallment of sin ; and all His ministry was 
so ordered that after His resurrection the Gospel 
of salvation should be proclaimed in every lan- 
guage and throughout every land. Compassion for 
humanity at large was the master force in His soul. 
And we can see it even here in His lamentation 
over the city that was doomed so soon to fall. 
From this we perceive that He loved men as men j 
and by how much He loved them, by so much He 
grieved to behold them hurrying on to an Eter- 
nity of darkness and despair. Think you that it 
was simply because the Jews were members of the 
same race as Himself, and of the same country, and 
of the same religious creed, that He wept over 
their approaching ruin, and mourned for their folly 
in not attending at the proper time to the things 
which belonged to their peace ? Oh, no : He wept 
over them as men who were partakers of like flesh 
and blood with Himself, — as men who, though 
fallen and ruined, might have been upraised 
from their sinfulness, and made the heirs of 

never-ending life, — and yet as men who had mad- 

6 



122 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST'S 

ly put away from them every offer of celestial 
bliss. 

Thus are we shown the wide reach of Christ's 
benevolence ; and we are called on in this partic- 
ular to imitate His gracious example. Here we 
learn what was the estimation in which He held 
the human soul ; and we learn how deep. and all- 
pervading was the interest which He felt in the 
character and condition of man, wherever found. 
It is evident that He saw in humanity, degraded 
and wretched as it is, powers that are still wonder- 
ful even in their ruins ; and it is clear that He 
longed to see men elevated to a communion with 
Himself, and grieved to behold them the prey of 
an ignorance and sinfulness which must at last 
consign them to the burnings of eternal shame. 
Yes, He pitied man in His lost estate, He had 
compassion on the multitude that were " scat- 
tered abroad as sheep having no shepherd" ; and 
the thought of their spiritual condition and their 
awful destiny lay heavy on His soul. Jesus knew 
but too well that condemnation had come upon our 
race ; and, when He foresaw how many would fall 
in future years after the example of His own coun- 
trymen, and how many would, like them, refuse 
to wash in the fountain that has been opened for 



SORROWING TEARS. 123 

sin and for uncleanness, there beat the throbs of 
anguish in His heart, and tears gushed down His 
cheeks. 

The spirit here manifested by Christ ought to 
move us each to sympathy with those who in our 
own or in other lands are walking in their impeni- 
tence to the grave. How few of us who enjoy the 
blessings of the Gospel feel in this matter as the 
Saviour felt when He was weeping over Jerusalem, 
and as He feels even now when seated in majes- 
ty on His throne. Look around you, and tell me 
where among professing Christians is that anxious 
love for the erring and the lost which Jesus mani- 
fested when He poured out His sighs and tears 
upon the Mount of Olives. Oh, were we filled 
with this love, and were we moved by its mighty 
impulses, we should not suffer so many of our 
friends to remain unwarned in their iniquity, and 
be content to shed those tears over their tombs 
which had better been shed over their lives ; and 
we should not let the heathen of foreign countries 
be sitting unprayed for in their dark alienation 
from God ; and we should not be ever attentive 
to the news that comes from far-away lands re- 
specting the ravages of pestilence and war, but 
always indifferent to the oft-repeated story of their 



124 TEACHINGS OF CHKIST's 

spiritual destitution and guilt ; and we should not 
be so eager to provide for ourselves a superabun- 
dance of the meat that perisheth, when we know 
that millions both at home and abroad are famish- 
ing for want of " the bread of life." 

If these things fail to touch us, it is because 
we do not sympathize with Christ, nor with 
those for whom He wept. Jesus felt, and felt 
deeply, for man's ignorance, and weakness, and 
guilt. He grieved over the whole race, and sighed 
to think of their awful doom. And yet there was 
one respect in which He could not sympathize with 
humanity as can we. u He knew no sin" ; but we 
know it, and, oh ! we know how bitter it is, and how 
vile, and how degrading, and how entirely it shuts 
us out from communion with God. Now what # our 
condition was before we were washed and sanctified, 
that is the condition of all the unconverted ; and in 
that they will for ever remain, if they do not come 
to Christ and receive from Him the gift of pardon 
and eternal life. Can we know this, and yet not 
be anxious for them ; can we know it, and yet not 
weep over them such tears of sorrow and compas- 
sion as Jesus wept ? God forgive us, if we have 
hitherto proved recreant in this matter to our trust ; 
and may we now, if never before, go forth in tears 



SORROWING TEARS. 125 

to the work of warning sinners, and of saving them, 
if possible, from the groanings and writhings of un- 
dying remorse. 

Whenever we call to mind this picture of Christ 
weeping over Jerusalem, we can not but be im- 
pressed with the conviction that He was wrought 
upon by a deep solicitude for man's salvation. 
There is no avoiding the belief that the conversion 
of all men is the object that lies closest His heart; 
and that we, therefore, who are His disciples 
should look upon the regeneration of the world as 
He looked upon it from Olivet, and afterwards from 
Calvary, and now from the battlements of Heaven. 
Jesus heard the roar of a coming desolation ; He 
saw its shadow creeping on; and He wept over 
those who were devoted to destruction the tears of 
compassionate grief. And this ought we to do, 
when we see the ruin that is hanging over them 
that are dear to us, and threatening every instant 
to make their repentance vain. 

Brethren, it is not strange that we should feel 
anxious in view of the danger to which our uncon- 
verted friends and all the impenitent are exposed. 
It would be strange indeed, if we did not ; and it 
would be very pitiable, if we never felt the tear of 
anguish welling up at the thought of their proba- 



126 TEACHINGS OF CHRIST'S 

bly miserable doom. By their own confession 
these unpardoned ones are not happy now, and 
there is but little prospect, — none whatever, if they 
do not flee to Christ in faith, — that they will be 
happy hereafter ; for all that they are doing, and 
wishing, and planning, and resolving, is only calcu- 
lated to consign them the more surely to the dun- 
geon of despair. How can we behold them thus 
careless, and not give way at times to a flood of 
tears ? Oh, it is impossible to observe their grow- 
ing indifference to the invitations of the Saviour, 
and their increasing callousness of soul, and their 
ever-strengthening mad determination to perish in 
their guilt, without groaning in spirit, and being 
impelled almost to say of each of them, as said 
Jesus of sin-ruined Jerusalem, " If thou hadst 
known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the 
things which belong unto thy peace ! — but now 
they are hid from thine eyes." 

Think it not an uncalled-for thing, ye impeni- 
tent, if ministers and Christian friends weep over 
you, and urge you with tears to attend to the mat- 
ters which pertain to your salvation. Did you see 
what we see, and know what we know, and feel 
what we feel, your only wonder would be that we 
do not show even greater anxiety about your spir- 



SORROWING TEARS. 127 

itual welfare, and do not beseech you with a more 
urgent pertinacity to turn from your unrighteous- 
ness, and live. Oh that we who are the followers 
of Jesus might be more faithful to you than we 
have ever been, and might tell you with more of 
earnestness, and more of tenderness, and more of 
weeping compassion, that, if you change not your 
course, you are utterly ruined and lost ! 

I am afraid that some of you to whom I now 
speak are turning yourselves into " vessels of 
wrath fitted for destruction"; and all because you 
will not be persuaded to repent of your iniquity, 
and believe in Christ. It is my heart's desire and 
prayer to God for you that you may be saved ; but 
I am awfully anxious lest, notwithstanding all that 
has been done for you and upon you, you may be- 
come by your continued disobedience the heirs of 
eternal misery and disgrace. Oh that I could now 
speak to you with the overwhelming might of an 
Edwards, or rather with the winning gentleness of 
a Payson or a McCheyne, and be made the instru- 
ment of converting you to Christ ! I think that I 
sincerely believe the Gospel ; but I know that in 
me, as in no man, is there power to create the 
faith of it in your hitherto cold hearts. And yet 
the Gospel is eminently worthy of your belief and 



128 TEACHINGS, ETC 



of your love. Now, how can you be made to be- 
lieve it and obey it ? If it would avail any thing, I 
could tell you with tears of the dreadful curse 
which is resting upon your souls, and of the un- 
quenchable fire that is burning for you in the lowest 
depths of the nethermost world. I could tell you 
also, and tell you weeping, of the coming judgment, 
and ask you all, " What will ye do in the end there- 
of ?" And more than this could I tell you. I could 
portray to you the infinite compassion of the Saviour, 
and could picture forth before you that mercy of His 
which has never failed. Let me remind you of 
these tilings now in this the day of your visitation 
and acceptance. Will you not listen to the be- 
seeching entreaties of the Redeemer ; and, as you 
have never yet cared for His threatenings, will you 
not now be melted by His tears ? Give heed at 
once, I beg of you, to the things which belong to your 
peace ; for, if you persist in neglecting them, the 
time is certainly at hand when they will be hid 
from your eyes. 



J^h)eK|flK)g (9beir §l^eir§« 



The Weeping op Jesus on Olivet a Proof of the Sincerity of 
His Wish to Save the Guilty from Ruin — The People oyer whom 
He Wept He had Labored for in Loye; and hence His Tears- 
Consistency of this Grief with the Fact (well mown to Jesus) 
that the Jewish Nation was Devoted to Destruction— Repentance 
would have saved the people; but, not repenting, they were 
Lost by their own Fault — Invalidity of the Sinner's Excuse that 
his Fate is Pre-determined by God — The Impenitent Man Self- 
destroyed— God's Offer of Salvation to All a Sincere Offer — 
Every Man Invited in Various Ways to Look in Penitence and 
Faith to Christ for Salvation— Tears of Jesus Still Appealing to 
the Sinner— The Weeping of the Redeemer Manifests the Dread- 
fulness of the Doom of those who Reject His Love — These Tears 
Forebode the Sinner's Eternal Destruction — Now is the Time to 
Seek the Saviour ; Now, while God has not Hidden the Things 
that Pertain to Man's Peace. 



Cljc Sabiouni ^mentation Direr dinners. 



It has been shown that the weeping of Jesus of 
Nazareth over Jerusalem, after its inhabitants had 
openly and often slighted His teachings, and when 
they were soon, as He knew, to deliver Him up to 
crucifixion, is a striking manifestation of His self- 
forgetfulness, and of His benevolence, and of His 
solicitude for man's salvation. His tears prove yet 
more ; for they evince, as has been intimated, an 
earnest sincerity on His part that would rescue the 
guilty, if possible, from eternal ruin. Had they 
been merely human tears, this might be doubted ; 
but, being the tears of the Son of God, who can 
not deceive, they may well be taken as a true in- 
dication of the feelings of His heart. Jesus would 
never have wept, had He not seen something, or 
felt something, which called fos tears. The mov- 
ing that stirred Him to His soul was a moving of 
sincerity ; and it told even more plainly and em- 



132 the saviour's lamentation 

phatically than words could tell how unwilling 
He is that sinners should perish, and how grieved 
He is whenever, in despite of His wishes and 
His express invitations, they are determined to 
die. 

For more than three years had the Saviour ex- 
ercised His ministry among the people of His na- 
tion, — healing them that were afflicted with dis- 
eases, restoring the blind, the deaf and the lame, 
calling the dead to life, working marvellous mira- 
cles, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of 
God and Christ. All of these things had He done 
in Jerusalem, or in its neighborhood ; and there 
were many in the city who were acquainted with 
Him as a man of mighty deeds, and some that be- 
lieved Him to be the Messiah who was to come into 
the world and reign over every nation on the globe. 
He knew the people well ; and He loved them with 
all His heart. They were endeared to Him, partly 
because they were, like Himself, the descendants 
of Abraham, partly because they were the chosen 
of Jehovah, and partly because He had labored and 
suffered in their behalf ; but they were dear to 
Him chiefly because they were straying off from 
Him who was the Heavenly Shepherd and Bishop 
of their souls. 



OVER SINNERS. 133 

It is not strange, therefore, that, as Jesus stopped 
for a moment on the slope of Olivet and surveyed 
the eitv into which He was about to enter for an 
hour of brief triumph, He could not refrain from 
weeping over the recollection of her folly in disre- 
garding His claims, and over the vision of her ap- 
proaching destruction, and the eternal fate of her 
guilty and blood-stained inhabitants. He looked 
down upon a people who deemed themselves wise, 
when they were rejecting wisdom's Author ; who 
were constantly neglectful of their dearest interests; 
and who, while living under a blaze of light, were so 
self-blinded by infatuation that they could not rec- 
ognize Him whom God had appointed to be their 
Deliverer, and through whom God was ready to 
make them more fully than ever the nation of His 
choice regards. He perceived that His teachings 
had been in vain, and in vain His doings of mir- 
aculous might. The tempest was brewing ; the 
clouds of divine wrath were collecting ; the thun- 
ders were muttering in the distance ; and very 
soon, as He foresaw, the gathering storm of indig- 
nation would burst, and pour down ruin on all the 
land. It was to Him a grievous sight, and when 
He gazed upon it, He heaved a sigh, and wept. 

You may be sure, then, that these which Jesus 



134 the saviour's lamentation 

shed were not the hollow tears of show, but tears 
of sincerity that came welling up from an aching 
and disconsolate heart. They spoke volumes of 
tenderness to those who saw them as they flowed ; 
and even yet, speaking to us, as they do, of a love 
that clings to us in our guilt, and weeps at our woe, 
they have not lost the witchery of their original 
fascination over the feelings of the soul. 

It may strike you, at the first thought, as some- 
what singular, that the Saviour should mourn, and 
mourn sincerely, as if it were a thing that might 
have been avoided, over a destruction which He 
knew to be determined upon in God's counsels, and 
without the occurrence of which God would seem 
to have been thwarted in His plans. Though He 
was well aware what agency His countrymen would 
take in His death, and was also aware that for this 
and their other guilt they should be uprooted from 
Judea ; and though He understood perfectly that 
they would never repent of their transgressions 
against a merciful Sovereign, and would never be- 
lieve in Him as the promised Messiah, Jesus kept 
plying them to the end of His ministry with en- 
treaties, and warnings, and expostulations, just as 
He would have done, had it still been wholly doubt- 
ful to Him whether they might not yet look with 



OVER SINNERS. 135 

loathing upon their iniquity and acknowledge Him 
as their King. He did this because He knew that, 
notwithstanding God's purpose of working by their 
agency, the Israelites were entirely at liberty to 
choose their own course, and at liberty to act as 
they pleased. There was no constraint put upon 
them at all ; for what they did was done at the 
dictate of their own will ; and, so far as it was 
wrong, they alone were responsible for the guilt. 

What precise object the Saviour had in keeping 
on with his pleas when He perceived they were 
vain, we may not know, — unless indeed it was to 
prove to all subsequent ages that the Jewish nation 
lost His favor solely by their own fault, and after 
He had urged them by every consideration to pause 
in their mad career, and to turn from their wicked 
course. We do know, however, that He was alto- 
gether sincere in His offers ; and that, had the 
Jews hearkened to His call, the nation would not 
have been blotted out from the land, and the peo- 
ple would not have perished eternally in their sins. 
If they did not obey Him, it was by no means be- 
cause they could not, but simply and solely because 
they would not. They might have given heed to 
His admonitions and His invitations ; but they 
wished it otherwise ; and otherwise it was. While, 



136 the saviour's lamentation 

therefore, it is true, on the one hand, that the re- 
jection of Christ by His countrymen had entered 
into the calculations made by God before the world 
was created, and true that the redemption of the 
human race depended in some sense upon their 
crucifying the Lord of glory ; it is not true, on the 
other hand, that this arrangement of God's made 
their wrong-doing necessary, — : since they would 
have done what they did, whether God meant to 
employ their agency in the furtherance of His 
plans or not. Their whole acting was of their own 
free will, and only at the promptings of their own 
evil hearts. Hence they were without excuse for 
putting the Saviour away from them ; and the 
Lord was just in His stern reckoning with the 
whole nation for spilling the blood of His Son. 

Just so is it with all God's dealings with men. 
He makes use of them, — of their wicked no less 
than of their right actions, — to bring about the ac- 
complishment of His own designs ; but He always 
does this in such a way that their freedom is not 
interfered with, and their guilt, if they sin, is all 
their own. It is idle then for you who are impen- 
itent to plead, as sometimes you do, that you can 
not be different from what you are, and that, if you 
are finally lost, it will be, not because of any fault 



OVER SINNERS. 137 

in yourselves, but because God had ordered it so, 
and determined upon your death. It is undeniable 
that He who made you knows perfectly, and al- 
ways knew, what will be your eternal destiny ; 
and He could not be more certainly informed of it, 
were it even fixed irrespective of your conduct by 
an absolute decree. But you will recollect that 
God's foreknowledge puts no restraint whatever 
upon your actions^ — that you are consciously free 
to do as you please, and just as free as you would 
be if God had no connection with you at all. If 
you hearken not to the things which pertain to 
your peace, it is because you will not hearken ; and 
if, in the face of all your well-understood obliga- 
tions, and in the midst of your Gospel privileges, 
and in despite of the repeated admonitions of God 
and the multiplied entreaties of Christ and the fre- 
quent soul-drawings of the Spirit, you continue to 
oppose yourselves to the invitations of divine love 
until you are given over to blindness of mind and 
hardness of heart, it will all be because you would 
not listen to the beseechings of a weeping Re- 
deemer, and would not accept of His gracious sal- 
vation. 

You have the power to obey the Saviour's call. 
You feel that you have the power ; and you feel it 



138 the saviour's lamentation 

none the less, even though God may be certain on 
His part that you will never exert it, but will go 
down in your impenitence to the pit of perdition. 
It is not power, then, that you lack : it is will. 
Your will is perverse ; moved neither by the kind 
words which Jesus speaks to you, nor by the tears 
which He sheds over your obstinacy and wicked 
unbelief. Be not deceived. Yourselves alone are 
to blame for your holding out against the invita- 
tions of the Saviour's love ; and oh ! let me tell 
you, the hour is hasting on, and may be even now 
at hand, in which, if you persist in your rebellion, 
the overtures of mercy will be made to you no 
more, and when He whom you have so wrongfully 
slighted will offer no longer to gather you beneath 
the shelter of His wings, but will say to you in the 
words of a sorrowful parting, u If ye had known, 
even ye, at least in this your day, the things which 
belong unto your peace! — but now they are hid 
from your eyes." 

Doubt as you may, there is nothing more cer- 
tain than that the Saviour is sincere when He of- 
fers you salvation. He does not want any one of 
you to perish ; and, if you will perish in spite of 
His wishes and His entreaties, you will go down 
to the dark dungeon mourned over by His sympa- 



OVER SINNERS. 139 

thetic heart, and lamented for as the miserably and 
eternally lost. You ought to know this, and to feel 
this ; for such is the lesson taught you by the weep- 
ing of Jesus over the doomed city of His love. And 
that same Divine Friend who wept at the fate of 
Jerusalem, is even now looking down from Heaven 
upon each of you, and He says, " Oh that thou 
wouldst know, at least in this thy day, the things 
which belong to thy peace !" If you will not obey 
His call, it is because you do not believe in His 
sincerity, and are distrustful of the offer of His 
grace. Credit my assertion when I assure you 
that Jesus is in earnest, — that He wants to draw 
you to Himself, that He wants to reconcile you to 
God, that He wants to whisper words of hope and 
peace to your souls. There is no one of you who is 
not called, and no one of you who is not bidden to 
come now, and take of the waters of redemption, 
and drink, and never thirst again. 

There are some of you, perhaps, to whom every 
invitation of Christ's will be made in vain ; and 
that because you have stoutly resolved not to ele- 
vate Him to the throne of your hearts. But who 
these are I know not ; and none that are human 
can tell. Therefore it is that I throw the invita- 
tion broadcast among you all, and assure you every 



140 THE SAVIOUR'S LAMENTATION 

one, on the authority of our Lord Himself, that if 
you will look to Him in penitence and faith, you 
shall most certainly be saved. If you think other- 
wise, you question the Redeemer's truthfulness, 
and pour contempt upon His tears. How can you 
doubt His sincerity, when you call to mind what 
He has already done for you, and what He is doing 
now, to make you know the things which pertain to 
your peace ? Think how often He has visited you 
with the stingings of conscience, and by the plead- 
ings of the Holy Ghost. Think how He has surround- 
ed you with the means of grace, and has urged you 
by a thousand considerations to turn from your in- 
iquity and escape the death that never dies. How 
often has He spoken to you by unexpected mer- 
cies, and by unlooked-for afflictions ; and how often 
has He spoken to you in prosperity, and in adver- 
sity ! Amid joy He has called you ; and He has 
called you amid grief. And you can not say that 
you did not hear the voice of His invitation. You 
did hear it : you heard it often, you heard it al- 
ways ; but you have never returned it an answer. 
The Saviour has dealt honestly and sincerely with 
you, as you are obliged to admit ; and, therefore, 
if you are not this moment at peace with Him, it 
is only because you have not accepted His offer of 



OVER SINNERS. 141 

pardon, and have kept far away from Him in heart 
and in life. 

Would that I knew how to make you believe that 
the exalted Jesus of Nazareth is even now longing 
to have you come and confess Him as your Redeem- 
er and your eternal Friend ; and that while He 
stands weeping over you, as it were, on the golden 
steps of His throne, He is stretching forth to you 
amid His tears the arms of His forgiving love. Oh 
that you might be made so to feel this that you will 
never forget it, but let it be to you from this time 
forth a fountain of out-streaming joy ! You ought 
to feel it, and you ought to believe it ; for Christ 
has done more than enough to prove to you that all 
of it is true. Think of Him as lamenting over Je- 
rusalem ; think of Him as going through Gethsem- 
ane's cruel anguish ; think of Him as nailed in tor- 
ture to the cross ; think of Him as taking His seat 
for the sake of His Church upon the right hand of 
the Father ; think of Him as sending the Spirit to 
convince, and to reprove, and to instruct, all them 
that formed the travail of His soul, — think of Jesus 
thus, and doubt no more as to whether He pities 
you, and is willing to make the light of the knowl- 
edge of His glory shine forth in your hearts. He 
bids you, one and all, to repent, and He bids you 



142 the saviour's lamentation 

to believe. Wherefore, if you will hear His voice, 
obey Him now, and be reconciled to God. Cast 
away your jealousy and your suspicions, and ear- 
nestly seek Him who says unto you in sincerity, 
" Look unto Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be 
ye saved !" 

The tears that were shed by Christ over Jerusa- 
lem, while they show how honest He is in His of- 
fer of salvation, and how anxious He is that all 
men should avail themselves of it, manifest also 
the dreadfulness of the doom of them who reject 
to the last His proffer of pardon and bliss. That 
must be a dire woe indeed which made the Son of 
God to weep ; and it tells you more plainly than 
words can tell how unspeakably awful is the loss 
of the soul. The curse of the Lord of hosts is a 
hot and withering curse which burns, and burns, 
for ever. Now this is the malediction that rests 
upon every one of you who is not a true-hearted 
disciple of the Saviour's, and is living without God 
in the world. 

If I am now addressing one who is neglecting 
the stupendous interests of Eternity, I would ask 
you to remember the foreboding tears of Jesus, 
and to ponder the fate of those for whom they 
were shed. I want to know whether you are will- 



OVER SINNERS. 143 

ing to have wept over you the bitter tears of un- 
availing regret ? I am sure you are not. And 
yet you are pursuing the same course as those 
whom the Saviour, even while He wept, consigned 
without mercy to their unrelenting fate. Beware 
lest you also have it said of you that the things 
which have to do with your peace are hid from 
your eyes. You are holding out in your rebellion 
against Him who is your rightful King ; you are 
despising His instructions ; you are disregarding 
His entreaties ; and you are stiffening your neck 
against His mild reproofs and against the tender 
invitations of His love. Now, where can all this 
land you but in the den of despair ? Your means 
of resistance to Christ are growing stronger every 
day, while the means which He uses to conquer 
your obstinacy are becoming less and less effectual ; 
so that it is too painfully evident that you are rap- 
idly nearing the time when the Spirit of Jesus will 
strive with you no more, and when the doom of 
Jerusalem's inhabitants will settle down in ever- 
lasting horror upon your soul. 

Alas ! I fear me that I perceive the root of your 
delusion. You think that the Saviour will yet 
plead with you, and His Spirit yet move upon you, 
more strongly than ever before ; and you hope that 



144 the saviour's lamentation 

you will still be converted in despite of your con. 
tinned and increasing dislike of the holiness which 
Grod requires. But what ground have you for this 
expectation ? You have none whatever. As to 
the mere question of power, Jesus might have com- 
pelled His countrymen to believe in Him by an in- 
fluence which they could not resist, and thus have 
saved them from a wretched condemnation. Such, 
however, was by no means His pleasure ; for this 
could He not have done without violating one of 
the fundamental principles of His Father's moral 
government. The people whose destruction He 
lamented had heard enough, and seen enough, and 
felt enough, to constrain them to accept Him as 
their Saviour ; but they were unwilling to be con- 
strained, and therefore they were justly given over 
to an eternal abandonment. Jesus knew that after 
they had put away from them, as they had, every 
argument and every admonition, even His omnipo- 
tence must not interpose in their behalf; and hence 
we see Him weeping with sorrow over their coming 
downfall, which, as a righteous and unchanging 
God, He could not and would not avert. 

Precisely so will Jesus deal with you. You 
know now that He is solicitous for your spiritual 
welfare ; and you know that He is urging you by 



OVER SINNERS. 145 

His calls of tenderness to consider without delay 
the things which belong to your peace. This very 
moment He comes and promises you eternal life 
upon the simple and sole condition that you render 
Him your heart. But He does not tell you that 
He will proclaim to you the same terms again, or 
that, should He do it, you will be at all likely to 
give Him as favorable a hearing as now. How can 
you venture to defer to the uncertain future the 
proper consideration of those things which have to 
do with the welfare of your soul ? The futuie will 
come ; but you may then be lying in your grave. 
The future will come ; but you may then find it 
impossible,— being racked by pain, or wandering 
in delirium, or struck with insensibility, — to con- 
sider the call which invites you to fellowship with 
God and Christ. The future will come ; but you 
may then be kept from hearing the beseechings of 
grace. The future will come ; but you may then 
be so hardened by your continued unbelief that the 
offer of mercy will fall unheeded on your ears, and 
your soul can be moved to contrition no more. 
Trust not to the future ; for the future may work 
your ruin. Put not off to the morrow that which 
may be, and ought to be, done to-day. To-day, if 
you will hear His voice, harden not your heart. 

' 1 



146 the saviour's lamentation, etc. 

Repent and believe now, — while yet you hear the 
call of mercy, and the gates of Heaven still stand 
wide. Flee to the Saviour now,— before the com- 
ing of that time when you may be banished to the 
land of everlasting gloom. Oh, remember ! 

" In that lone land of deep despair 

No Sabbath's heavenly light shall rise ; 
No God regard your bitter prayer, 
No Saviour call you to the skies." 

Neglect not the opportunity now given you to 
make your peace with God. It is this present 
u now" which is your " accepted time"; and it is 
this present " now" which is your " day of salva- 
tion." To-morrow the things that pertain to your 
happiness may be hidden from your eyes : to-day 
you see them, and are moved by them, and feel 
that you ought to give them instant attention. Ac- 
cept, then, at once the offer of the Redeemer. Oh, 
accept it ! lest, grieved by your long perverseness, 
He uplift over you the last tearful wail of regret, 
and leave you eternally alone. 



Ifye Xe^irs of Gohjp^ssioii). 



The Signer's Unjust Suspicions of the Saviour— Christ's Con- 
duct Proves His Sincerity — The Redemption He Wrought Evi- 
dence oe His Earnest Compassion — The Sufferings He Underwent 
for Men Guilty and Condemned— No Stronger Proof of His Sin- 
cerity Possible— The Love Displayed in this Work of Redemption 
—The Saviour Warning by His Tears respecting the Things of 
Man's Peace— Man Disbelieving and Resisting the Admonition — 
Danger of Salvation's being Hidden from the Sinner's Eyes— The 
Day of Mercy Now, but Soon the Night of Despair— The Re- 
deemer would Save, and still Invites by His Spirit— Impenitent 
Man yet Doubting — Offer of Mercy made to the Most Guilty— The 
Offer Made to all Classes— The Clemency of the Redeemer Still 
in Operation— Last Call to Attend to the Things Pertaining to 
Peace. 



CJje Comjraaaioitat* Ceara of Christ 



It may seem to you a very simple proposition, 
and a proposition which will at once be generally 
accepted, that the Saviour evinced, by His weep- 
ing on Olivet, a sincere desire for the transgressor 
against Heaven to turn from his evil ways, and live. 
You assent without hesitation to this announce- 
ment ; and you think it impossible that any man 
who receives the Scriptures as divine can refuse 
the teaching his instant belief. In spite of this 
admission of yours, however, there is nothing more 
demonstrably true than the fact that, if you be not 
a penitent believer in Christ, you have no Bible 
faith in this Bible representation. Notwithstand- 
ing your verbal admissions, you are still suspicious 
of the Redeemer in your heart ; and you can not 
realize to yourself that He truly loves you, and 
would make you a co-heir of His kingdom. There 
is a fear of Him within you, — a distinctly felt 



150 THE COMPASSIONATE 

doubt of His assurances, even if you can not, or 
will not, give that doubt expression. The preacher 
may bring you face to face with Jesus, and may 
tell you, and even cause you to feel to some ex- 
tent, that He is longing to admit you to His em- 
brace ; yet will you not lay hold of the declaration 
and be glad in it with exceeding joy. In a word, 
you will not really believe it. You may weep, as 
you hear the Saviour's goodness spoken of ; and 
you may experience a thrill of sensibility in every 
fibre of your frame, when there is depicted before 
you the tenderness of His love ; but you will still 
be conscious in your inmost soul that your distrust 
of Him is not wholly done away, and that He has 
not become to you a reconciled Friend. You will 
not " know" the things that belong to your peace, 
so as to walk continually in the light of the Re- 
deemer's countenance, and to be comforted by His 
smiles. 

I think that the experience of some of you who 
read these pages wSl fall in with this representa- 
tion ; and it will compel you to admit that, how- 
ever you may have received the proposition in an 
intellectual point of view, you have never vividly 
realized it in your heart, — that Jesus is not only 
unwilling to see you lost, but longs to see you 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 151 

saved. You can not fail to perceive that, did you 
regard Him as so tender in His affection, and as 
exercising that affection distinctly and personally 
towards you^ you would be sure to find your rest 
and your satisfaction in returning His love and in 
obeying His will. Now, you are well aware that 
you entertain no such regard, and are moved by no 
such spirit of obedience. You know that, whatever 
peace you have, and whatever joy, it is not " the 
peace which passeth all understanding," and not 
" the joy that is unspeakable and full of glory." 
The even flow of your lives (if' it is even), springs 
from your gratification with the things of earth, 
and has not its source in the contentment which 
the Redeemer bestows. You are reposing in quiet, 
and are little disturbed by anxiety (if this is in 
truth your condition), not because you think Him 
to be your Friend, but because you manage to keep 
Him out of your thoughts, and to forget that you 
have an account to render Him as a Saviour that 
has been doubted, and a Saviour that has been de- 
spised. 

It is my desire to convince you at present, not 
that this distrust of a kind and merciful Redeemer 
is a thing of guilt, — which indeed it is, — but that 
there is absolutely no reason for it at all. I want 



152 THE COMPASSIONATE 

to show you, by the Spirit's aid, that there is noth- 
ing to hinder you, save your own self-imposed blind- 
ness, from seeing the face of Jesus shining upon 
you from out the darkness \ and that there is noth- 
ing to prevent you, except your own unworthy and 
injurious suspicions, from believing in your soul that 
He is casting on you a look of kindly regard, and 
holding forth to you the arms of His beseeching love. 
I take it for granted that you are prepared to 
admit that, whatever be your natural and acquired 
virtues and accomplishments, you are, if unrenewed 
in heart, both in your feelings and in your prac- 
tices, forge tters of the Saviour, — living without 
Him in the world as well in thought as in affec- 
tion ; and I suppose that, knowing yourselves to 
be in this condition, you believe those representa- 
tions of the Scripture which declare that condem- 
nation rests upon you, and that, notwithstanding 
all that may be amiable, and praiseworthy, and 
fascinating, in your character, you are what the 
apostle calls " vessels of wrath fitted for destruc- 
tion." I presume that you accept the Bible doc- 
trine that, if the love of Christ is not in you, you 
are " dead in trespasses and sins," and are, there- 
fore, no less than the vilest, subjects of the stern 
malediction of an outraged Law. 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 153 

Believing this representation, you will perceive 
that, if the Redeemer has done that which will re- 
instate you in God's favor, and free you from the 
curse of the Law, He has given a clear proof of 
His interest in your behalf and of His wish to save 
you from ruin. Now, He has afforded you just 
such evidence of His desire for your welfare ; and 
He appeals to it this day as His solemn assurance 
that He is anxious to clasp every one of you who 
is still unpardoned to His forgiving breast. Sup- 
pose He had left you to yourselves : suppose He 
had declined to execute the plan of salvation which 
He and the Father devised • suppose He had not 
broken down the barrier which Sin had raised be- 
tween Jehovah and a guilty world ; suppose He 
had not thrust aside with His own hands the ob- 
stacles that interposed betwixt the Creator and 
His offending creatures ; suppose He had not made 
an atonement for iniquity by taking the burden of it 
upon Himself, and brought in an everlasting right- 
eousness by His perfect obedience, and borne in 
His own body the chastisement of your peace : 
suppose, I say, that Jesus of Nazareth had not car- 
ried out this mighty scheme of redemption, what 
else would you have been, — yes, every one of you, 
— but the eternal prey of your evil passions and 



154 THE COMPASSIONATE 

eternal outcasts from the presence of the Lord 
and from the glory of His power ? Had Jesus de- 
sired your death, He needed only to leave you to 
your own course ; and His aim would have been 
reached. Had He wished you to be ruined, it was 
only necessary for Him to let the poison of sin 
work within you ; and tell you of no remedy. 
But, He did not want you to perish ; He did not 
want you to be swept off in your guilt to the pit 
of the lost. Oh, no ; it is not this that Jesus has 
ever desired. He has desired rather to save you 
from your sins, and to constitute you the inherit- 
ors of unending bliss. He wants to transform you 
from "vessels of wrath" into " vessels of mercy"; 
He wants to change you from enemies to friends ; 
He wants to turn you from the paths of disobedience 
into the paths of righteousness ; He wants to bring 
you to Himself as loving brethren, and to exhibit 
you as the monuments of His pardoning grace. 

If you doubt these assertions, consider what the 
Saviour has done in the work of redemption to 
make you the partakers of heavenly joy. " In 
bondage under the elements of the world", both 
by nature and by practice, you have been rescued 
from your slavery by His crucifixion, and you have 
made to you the offer of reconciliation with an ill- 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 155 

treated and offended Sovereign. Yes, Jesus of 
Nazareth, the only-begotten of the Father, took 
upon Himself the curse of the Law for your sake ; 
and for your sake He fulfilled that Law to its ut- 
termost requirement. There was none in all the 
universe that could have done this except the spot- 
less Lamb of God. He has died for you, to free 
you from the malediction which rests upon your 
souls ; and He has gone up into Heaven for you, 
to be unto you the Mediator of the new and ever- 
lasting covenant, and that He may show forth in 
you the abundant riches of His favor. Not con- 
tent with putting into your hand a certificate of 
acquittal from your guilt, He is bent on giving you 
a title-deed to a mansion in His celestial home. 
Not satisfied with wiping off from you the taint of 
rebellion, He is determined to clothe you in the 
robes of heavenly priests and kings, and to secure 
for you all the blessings which result from " the 
adoption of sons". 

Sure am I that these are wondrous things which 
the Redeemer, even your Redeemer, has done in 
your behalf; and it is impossible for you really to 
believe that He has effected all this for your sake, 
and yet to doubt His sincerity when He laments 
over your blindness to the things of your welfare. 



156 THE COMPASSIONATE 

Consider the nature of His wrought-out salvation ; 
and observe how He proves that He means what He 
says when He asks you to turn to Him and live. 
Note how wonderful, and how undeserved, is this 
kindness of the Saviour. Think how, though you are 
guilty, and alienated from Him in heart and life, He 
offers you pardon ; and not only pardon, but redemp- 
tion ; and not only redemption, but justification ; 
and not only justification, but adoption, — and this 
adoption an inheritance among the saints in light. 
Look over these blessings, — held out to you, all of 
them, as the gifts of Jesus' grace, — reflect on their 
magnitude ; and then doubt, if you can, that He is 
altogether in earnest, when He says to each of 
you, " Oh that thou wouldst know, even thou, at 
least in this thy day, the things which belong unto 
thy peace !" 

If what the Redeemer has done in the working 
out of man's salvation does not show that He is 
desirous to rescue the sinful from destruction, 
there is no truth whatever that is capable of proof. 
A stupendous undertaking was it indeed even for 
Him, to attempt to procure the sinner's justifica- 
tion. The difficulty which had to be met was a 
difficulty which not only man, but the highest 
archangel, was unable to resolve. The question 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 157 

was, How can the Lawgiver be just, and yet jus- 
tify those who had broken the Law ? The question 
was, How could the race that had violated the 
injunctions laid on them in the hearing of the 
universe be relieved from condemnation, and yet 
God's character remain untarnished, and the pillars 
of His government remain unshaken ? The ques- 
tion was, How could the Lord be merciful, and yet 
continue firm to His word and uphold His truthful- 
ness before the eyes of all His intelligent creation ? 
And this was a question to which none among the 
hosts of Heaven could give a response. They saw 
the mighty obstacle in the way of the sinner's re- 
demption ; and they felt it to be an obstacle which 
they were not able to remove. They could not 
imagine how God might pardon the violators of 
His commandments, and still preserve His honor 
and His authority among the creatures He had 
made. They knew not how to magnify the Law, 
and, even while magnifying it, to redeem the trans- 
gressor from its curse ; and they knew not how to 
execute the threatened punishment, and, even while 
executing it, to lift the penalty from off the should- 
ers of guilty men. 

But, blessed be our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, what angels knew not, He knew, and what 



158 THE COMPASSIONATE 

angels shrunk from undertaking, He undertook, 
and carried into perfect accomplishment. There 
came up One from Edoni, " travelling in the great- 
ness of his strength"; and there came up One from 
Bozrah, who was " mighty to save". He it was, — 
Jesus of Nazareth, the mourner on Olivet, — that 
entered upon the arduous enterprise of rescuing 
the sinful and the lost, while He magnified the vi- 
olated Law, and shed new lustre on the attributes 
of that Grod who rules the world in righteousness 
and truth. On Him was laid the iniquity of us 
all; and by His stripes we were healed. He bore 
the dreadful load of our guilt ; and into His bosom 
was poured the red wine-cup of Jehovah's wrath, 
which we had been condemned to drink, and to 
drink to the lowest dregs. 

There is something wonderful in this lofty un- 
dertaking, — something which far surpasses our 
comprehension, and makes us tremble, when we 
think of it, with a fearful delight. There is in it 
the very grandeur of love, — love too high to be 
reached ; love too profound to be fathomed ; love too 
vast to be measured ; love which neither words can 
express, nor thoughts conceive. And tell me, ye 
that are doubting the Saviour's assurance of His 
interest in your well-being, tell me wherefore, if 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 159 

He does not desire you to be happy for ever, did 
He pass a life of suffering for you, and die for you 
in agony upon the cross ? Wherefore, if He is not 
shocked at the thought of your destruction, the 
sorrows which He heaped upon His own head; 
wherefore His sad pilgrimage as a man among men ; 
wherefore His cruel privations ; and, above all, 
wherefore His distressing death ? There is no ar- 
gument so potent in proof of His mercy toward 
the impenitent, as the terrible anguish which He 
took upon Himself when He endured the storm of 
God's fury in the transgressor s stead. Oh, His 
love is a sincere, and all-embracing, and everlast- 
ing, love ! I see it in the heart-sweat of the gar- 
den ; I see it in the torturings of the cross ; I see 
it in the hidings of the Father's countenance in 
that dark hour when the Saviour seemed to be for- 
saken, and when awful desolateness and sore trav- 
ail came upon His soul. Herein I read the evi- 
dence of Jesus' love to sinners, — to all sinners, 
even to you ; and I hear Him saying in tones of 
tenderness such as He alone can use, " Oh that ye 
would know, even ye, at least in this your day, the 
things which belong unto your peace !" 

Yes, ye impenitent and unbelieving, there are 
things that belong to your peace ; and there is a 



160 THE COMPASSIONATE 

day in which it becomes you to attend to them, 
lest they be wholly and for ever hid from your 
eyes. The Saviour is anxious in your behalf; 
fearing that you will continue to neglect the mat- 
ters which pertain to your salvation, until it is too 
late to think of them, and you are left without 
Christ and without hope. Take warning, I be- 
seech you, from His tears of compassion shed over 
Jerusalem ; and look upon these tears as one of 
the strongest proofs He has ever given of His un- 
willingness that any should perish, and of His de- 
sire for all to come to Him as their Redeemer, and 
find eternal life. 

You have been taught in various ways what those 
things are which pertain to your salvation ; and the 
Redeemer would now by His Spirit bring them 
again to your remembrance. He reminds you of 
your enmity to Grod and your long disobedience to 
His will, — declaring that for this you must repent 
from the heart, and resolve to forsake all your sins. 
He reminds you, furthermore, that, while repent- 
ance is good, and proper, and even rigidly de- 
manded ; yet that the sincerest repentance is of no 
avail, unless it is accompanied by faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ. This faith He exhorts you to ac- 
quire, — telling you that it is the turning-point of 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 1G1 

your acceptance with God. He assures you that, 
though you are sinful, and, as such, obnoxious to 
punishment, yet He has made ample provision for 
your justification before the Father, and for your 
growth in holiness until you become meet for Hea- 
ven. To believe that He has done this, to believe 
it in the soul, is faith, — that faith which He com- 
mands you to seek, if you would truly know the 
things which belong to your peace. The Redeemer 
offers you a perfect salvation ; and there is nothing 
to prevent you from securing it except your want 
of faith. Oh, struggle to attain the faith required, 
— imploring God to give it to you ; for the lack of 
it is due to the rooted unwillingness of your minds 
to believe that Jesus loves you, and would save 
you from -destruction. Do battle with this fixed 
perverseness of your hearts ; strive to realize the 
goodness of Christ ; and seek to lay hold of Him 
as your righteousness and your strength, in a firm 
reliance upon the efficacy of His death and the 
power of His mediation. 

I know not how long each of you has been re- 
sisting the Saviour s entreaty that you should at- 
tend to the things which belong to your peace ; but 
I do know that there is no one of you, unrepent- 
ant and unbelieving to-day, who is not in danger 



162 THE COMPASSIONATE 

of having all these things hidden from his eyes. 
With some of you Jesus has borne very many 
years ; and, though a thousand times He has been 
about to desert you, a thousand times He has re- 
frained. Others of you have had a shorter period 
of probation; but, warned few times or many times, 
you are drawing nearer and nearer to that hour 
when you shall be warned no more. All of you 
are under sentence of condemnation ; and you have 
been spared so far to prove to you, and to all the 
universe, that the Redeemer takes no pleasure in 
your ruin. You are indebted to His long-suffering 
more, perhaps, than you suppose. Not only has 
He extended the period of your reprieve again 
and again ; but He has plied you meanwhile with 
all the agencies of salvation, — urging them upon 
you with a pertinacity that would not be denied ; 
and has striven most earnestly to lead you to re- 
pentance and to the obedience which springs from 
faith. 

I would remind you, as I array these facts be- 
fore your mental vision, that you, on your part, 
have done, and are now doing, all you can to frus- 
trate the kind intentions of the Saviour. You are 
putting away from you every offer of mercy, — thus 
riveting more tightly the chains of your condemna- 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 16 



o 



tion. Why will you not remember that, though 
Jesus wishes all men to know the things which per- 
tain to their salvation, yet millions upon millions 
have had them hidden from their eyes ? The Re- 
deemer desires you to be saved ; but that is very 
far from saying you will be saved. To be frank 
with you, there are some among you who give your 
Christian acquaintances little reason to hope that 
you will ever find the path of life. The offer of 
pardon and of a blissful eternity has often been 
made to you, and made sincerely ; but you have as 
often rejected it, and have gone on increasing in 
impenitence and obduracy of heart. Yes, the Sav- 
iour has favored you indeed ; but you are still 
barren fig-trees in His vineyard, and He is getting 
ready to cut you down. Think of the days, and 
the months, and the years, which have been granted 
you for spiritual improvement ; call to mind the 
privileges of many a sweet Sabbath ; recollect the 
entreaties of ministers and of friends ; remember 
your Heaven-sent comforts and Heaven-sent afflic- 
tions ; and then consider how you have let all these 
means of grace pass by unappropriated, and have 
not regarded the things which belong to your peace. 
You can not deny that Jesus has been very indul- 
gent to you in giving you so favorable a day of 



164 THE COMPASSIONATE 

probation; and you can not deny that He would 
be just, were He now to withdraw all His gracious 
influences and leave you to your doom. And how 
do you know that He is not about to forsake you, 
and call you by His Gospel never again ? You 
have not believed Him ; you have not obeyed Him ; 
and verily He would deal with you righteously, 
were He now to depart from you, and never more 
present to you the offer of salvation. 

This is the day of your acceptance, ye impen- 
itent, — a day of Gospel teaching, a day of precious 
privileges, a day of grand opportunities ; but a day 
which will soon be followed by a night that has no 
end. The time is short : therefore, what you have 
to do, do it quickly and with all your strength. 
Every moment you now lose is more precious than 
gold ; for each minute that flits along towards eter- 
nity bears with it some portion of the life-blood of 
your souls. Soon you will pass the point beyond 
which it is impossible to retrace your steps ; and 
then you will be utterly undone. To-day you may 
know the things which belong to your peace : to- 
morrow, — the sad to-morrow in which the Saviour 
ceases to plead, and only weeps, — all these things 
will be hid from your eyes. You see now : but 
beware lest blindness come upon you, — that blind- 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 165 

ness which not even a sunbeam from Heaven can 
remove, that blindness for which there is no com- 
pensation, that blindness which consigns the soul 
to a darkness that may be felt amid the regions 
where hope and mercy are unknown. 

I desire to have you distinctly understand that 
the Redeemer is now extending to you each another 
invitation to be reconciled to the Father through 
faith in the Son. His messenger comes and as- 
sures you, upon evidence which you ought not to 
doubt, that Jesus will be delighted to see you at- 
tending to the things that have to do with your 
eternal destiny. To you each is this word of 
exhortation personally addressed ; and you are 
called on, every one of you, to listen to the voice 
that speaks to you from Heaven, and to open to 
the Saviour who is knocking at the door of your 
hearts. Oh, I do believe that the Spirit of the liv- 
ing God is now at work upon you ; and I am sure 
that, if you will suffer Him, He will give energy to 
what has been said, and convert your souls. Turn 
not away from Him ; steel not your breasts against 
Him, — lest you lose the knowledge which He alone 
can impart. The Spirit can make you behold what 
now is dark, if you will ask Him for light. The 
Spirit can reveal to you the enormity of your guilt, 



166 THE COMPASSIONATE 

if you will pray for a deeper conviction. The Spirit 
can make you believe, if you will beg Him to give 
you faith. The Spirit can melt down your stub- 
bornness, if you will humbly and penitently sub- 
mit yourselves to the workings of His power. The 
Spirit can make you perceive the value of salva- 
tion, and can enable you to lay hold on eternal life. 
The Spirit can cause the, rays of a divine illumina- 
tion to break forth within you, and make you see 
" the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the 
face of Jesus Christ." Pray, then, earnestly for 
the Spirit's aid ; that what has been spoken to you 
about the compassion of Christ may be blest to 
your conversion, and that your bosoms may be 
made to palpitate this day with the throbbings of 
a new-born faith. 

In spite of all that has been said, some of you 
still entertain ungenerous suspicions of the Re- 
deemer, and you will not really believe that He 
desires to save you, and render you the trophies 
of His grace. But, I assure you, it is true, and 
very true, that He is even now striving to bring 
you to Himself, — that your fellowship may hence- 
forth be with the Father and with the Son. He is 
even now begging you to cast aside your fears, and 
to put your hand upon the covenant of redemption. 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 167 

Will you not listen to the warm pleadings of His 
voice, as He says to you, u Oh that ye would know, 
even ye, at least in this your day, the things which 
belong unto your peace !" Mark you, there is no 
threatening here. There is nothing but the be- 
seeching tenderness of love. And I do think that, 
when Jesus thus condescends to entreat you, when 
He woos you by sweet solicitations, when He pours 
out before you the fullness of His fraternal heart, 
you ought to hear Him, and you ought to turn to 
ffim, and you ought to obey His call. 

Some of you are still afraid of the Saviour ; for 
you feel that you are awfully guilty in His sight. 
But why should you shrink back from the Re- 
deemer who tells you that, if you will trust in Him, 
it matters not though your sins be as scarlet, they 
shall be white as snow ? Why should you stay 
away from Him, when He says to you that He is 
waiting to be gracious, and that He is ready to 
press you to His bosom as the brethren of his love ? 
By His long-suffering and goodness, by His tears 
shed upon Olivet, by His solemn declarations, I do 
protest to you that you are wronging Him as a 
tender-hearted Saviour ; and doing despite to the 
invitations of His grace. Your fears are wholly 
without foundation. Seek Him with full purpose 



168 THE COMPASSIONATE 

of soul ; and yen shall find Him, and shall rejoice 
in Him with abounding joy. Cease from your un- 
kind doubts, and throw yourselves into the arms 
of His mercy. Believe that He grieves over your 
determination to perish ; believe that He wishes 
you to live, and that therefore He has suffered for 
you, and died for you, and risen for you from the 
grave, and ascended for you to His mediatorial 
throne. Believe this, believe it in your hearts ; 
and salvation will have come to you from above. 

I want to remind you again, before I conclude, 
that the offer of the Saviour's mercy is now made 
to you all without exception. . It matters not 
whether you be such as have fallen from your first 
love, and come afresh under condemnation ; or 
whether you be such as are just beginning to be 
anxious about the interests of your souls, and have 
learned that God has a controversy with you ; or 
whether you be such as are to a great extent indif- 
ferent to the kindness of your Redeemer, but yet 
are troubled at times in view of the future ; or 
whether you be such as care not at all for the 
claims of God and the claims of Christ, — to one 
and all of you the Saviour says, in a voice of ten- 
derness that ought to melt the coldest heart, u Oh, 
that ye might know, even ye, at least in this your 



TEARS OF CHRIST. 169 

day, the things which belong to your peace !" There 
is not one among you to whom He does not now 
hold out the promise of pardon, if you will repent 
of your sins, and seek Him in the manner of His 
appointment. I care not how wicked you are, the 
Redeemer is not willing that you should die, but 
greatly prefers that you should live. You may 
have gone very far away from your Heavenly 
Father, and have sinned against Him with a high 
hand, and have forsaken the covenant made with 
Him in former years, and have crucified afresh your 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; but, notwith- 
standing all, the Redeemer does not want to 
see you perish, but wants to make you the co- 
heirs of His kingdom and the possessors of perfect 
peace. 

Some of you have long lived for every thing 
else but Christ ; but even you He is unwilling to 
leave to your merited fate. Seek Him, then, in 
this your day ; seek Him before the night of death 
draws nigh, and before the time of mercy is over ; 
and ask Him to speak the words of forgiveness to 
your souls. Your childhood is gone ; your youth 
is gone ; your riper years are gone ; and now you 
are in the sere and yellow leaf of advancing age. 
There is, however, a little hope for you yet. Oh, 

8 



170 THE COMPASSIONATE 

lay hold upon it, lest it vanish away and leave you 
to darkness and despair ! 

The sins of some of you are aggravated ; for 
they have been against light and knowledge such 
as ? if given even in a tithe of it to others, would 
have led them to salvation. But as for you, you 
have abused your privileges, and despised your 
advantages, until you have run up against you I 
know not how tremendous an account of guilt. 
Yet, for you also there is pardon ; for it is even 
over you, — yea, the very worst of you, — that Je- 
sus lifts up the voice of His beseechings, and begs 
you to attend to the things which belong to your 
peace while the Grospel day still shines upon you, 
and the night of evil has not come. 

I know not the precise spiritual condition of any 
of you whom I now address ; but I do know that 
there is no one among you to whom the Redeemer 
is not this moment extending the hands of His 
clemency, and imploring you to seek His face while 
yet He may be found. There is nothing between 
you and a Saviour ready to receive you but your 
obstinate unbelief. You are not straitened in Him ; 
but are straitened in yourselves, and in yourselves 
alone. You need not say, any one of you, that 
you are too great a sinner to be accepted ; for it 



TEARS OE CHRIST. 171 

was sinners whom Jesus came to call to His king- 
dom and glory. You need not say that you are 
too utterly lost ever to be rescued ; for Jesus came 
to seek and to save that which is lost. It is enough, 
if you feel your wickedness, and will forsake it. 
This will deliver you from death. It is enough, 
if you know that you are wanderers from the 
Saviour, and are resolved to return to Him. He 
will receive you, and make you His friends. 

Look unto the Redeemer, every one of you, and 
rejoice in His abounding love. As an ambassador 
for Christ, I do beseech you to be reconciled to 
Him whom you have so grossly offended. He is 
willing, nay, He is anxious, for you all to become 
the subjects of His forgiving grace. Would that 
I knew how to lead you to believe this ; and would 
that I could make you feel that it is you whom Je- 
sus calls in person, and you whom He warns in 
person, when He says, " Oh that ye might know, 
even ye, at least in this your day, the things which 
belong unto your peace !" Now, it is you to whom 
He speaks ; and it is you for whose salvation He 
fears ; and it is you to whom He says, in addition, 
" Come unto Me, and I will in no wise cast you 
out." Wherefore, hear His invitation, and give heed 
to it, that you may not have the things of your 



172 THE COMPASSIONATE TEARS, ETC. 

peace for ever hidden from your eyes. Seize fast 
upon the Saviour's promise ; and begin from this 
hour to exercise the faith, and to put forth the 
obedience, of those who have been called out of 
nature's darkness into the Gospel's marvellous 
light. 



[ l8AyrV.mO^] [ 



REV. DR. DUNCAN'S WORKS, 

Published by Sheldon & Company, New York. 



-4~*~*- 



THE 

PULPIT GIFT-BOOK. 



This is a volume of 344 pages, neatly printed on large type. It is com- 
posed of discourses delivered in the church over which the author is pastor, 
— with an Appendix of valuable historical matter, prepared expressly for 
the work. The book has been received with marked favor, having found 
numerous readers among classes that seldom peruse any thing which comes 
from the Pulpit. 

The Gift-Book is the "Ladies' Pulpit Offering" remodeled ; being cor- 
rected in several respects, and having new matter added to most of the 
sermons. 



" The spirit of evangelism pervades every discourse. The style is chaste, 
but abounds with a richness of figure that almost makes each passage a 
vivid picture." — New Orleans Creole. 

" The subjects are happily chosen, and are treated with a flowing beauty 
of diction, and a force of logic, rarely equaled by the most gifted authors 
of the day." — The Mississippian. 

" There is an honest, manly independence, and yet a genial human sym- 
pathy pervading these pages, which will make them attractive to many 
who consider the reading of printed sermons a dull business." — Sou. Bap. 

" The happy selection of subjects, the beauty of the style, the freshness 
of the thought, the earnestness of appeal, and the strong human feeling 
which pervades all its pages, will, we think, find it numerous readers, who 
can scarcely rise unbenefited from its perusal." — New York Examiner. 

" These sermons are evangelical in doctrine, and often intensely earnest 
in spirit ; evincing, on the part of the author, a warm heart as well as a 
glowing imagination." — True Union. 

lt We seldom meet with a volume of sermons so well calculated to be 
universally popular." — Biblical Recorder. 

"Mr. D. is a forcible, graphic writer, and seldom fails to invest his sub- 
ject v/ith a thrilling interest. Thus, his sermon on the ' Propriety and 
Beauty of Baptism' would grace any one of our best Annuals." — Gh. Sec. 



Price, $1 (postage free). Yery liberal discounts to wholesale purchasers. 
Order of Sheldon & Co., New York, or of ¥m. Duncan, New Orleans. 



REV. DR, DUNCAN'S WORKS, 
Published by Sheldon & Company, New York. 



THE TEARS 



OF 



JESUS OF NAZARETH. 

Part First.— THE TEARS AT LAZARUS' GRAVE. 

" Jesus -wept." — John, 11 : 35. 

Part Second.— THE TEARS ON MOUNT OLIVET. 

" And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If 
thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto 
thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes. 11 — Luke, 19 : 41, 42. 



This volume, which is just published, treats of Jesus of Nazareth in His 
twofold character, "as a Sympathizer with His disciples, and a compas- 
sionate Mourner over those who will not hearken to His voice." His 
weeping at the tomb of Lazarus gives occasion to consider Him in the one 
light ; His weeping over Jerusalem, in the other. The book is adapted to 
the popular taste ; and it is believed that it will find among the people 
numerous readers, who will be charmed with the warm glow of its 
thoughts, and the happy manner in which these thoughts are grouped, 
with the fitness of its topics to the spiritual wants of humanity, and with 
the directness of its appeals to the conscience and the heart. 



The book may be obtained, singly and by wholesale, of Sheldon & Co., 
New York, or of Wm. Duncan, New Orleans. 

Price, 75 cents. A liberal discount to those purchasing to sell again. 



REV. DR. DUNCAN'S WORKS, 

Published by Sheldon & Company, New York. 



HISTORY 

OF 

THE EARLY BAPTISTS: 

FROM THE " BEGINNING OF THE GOSPEL" TO THE RISE OF AFFUSION 
AS BAPTISM, AND OF INFANT BAPTISM, 28 A.D.— 250 A.D. 

WITH AN APPENDIX ON THE 

ORIGIN OF THE BAPTISTS IN AMERICA. 

The object of this book, which is Part First of a Brief History of the 
Baptists, and of their Distinctive Principles and Practices, from the plant- 
ing of the Church until the present time — is to prove that the Early Church, 
from its origin to the year 250, was essentially Baptist. The present (third 
edition) contains an Essay on Roger Williams and the Providence Church ; 
showing, among other things, that American Baptisms do not spring from 
that of Mr. Williams, nor American Baptist churches from that in Provi 
dence. 

" An accurate logician, a thorough scholar, a well-read theologian, and a 
profound thinker, he (Mr. D.) leaves no corner in the fields of biblical, 
classical, or modern literature unexplored. We feel no risk in predicting 
that this book will become a denominational standard." — K T. Courier. 

" Prof. D. is a scholar whose care and research appear on every page of 
his production. He has very clearly exhibited the evidenco that the Apos- 
tolic and primitive Churches were, in their essential characteristics, Bap- 
tist churches." — Examiner. 

" The style is chaste, the facts clearly and frankly stated, the reasoning 
generally logical, and the deductions plain and natural." — Louisiana Baptist. 

11 This is a succinct and practical view of an important subject, which is 
adapted to common readers, and by which any one might be instructed 
and profited." — New York Chronicle. 



Price of "The Early Baptists," ^5 cents (postage free). Liberal dis- 
counts to wholesale purchasers. 

Order of Sheldon & Co., New York ; or of Wm. Duncan, New Orleans. 



REV. DR. DUNCAN'S WORKS 
Published by Sheldon & Company, New York. 



THE 

LIFE, CHARACTER, AND ACTS 



OP 



JOHN THE BAPTIST. 



NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION. 



This History of the Forerunner is translated from the German, with in- 
corporations by the Editor. It discusses thoroughly all the leading topics 
which relate to the Baptist. The treatise is the latest and most complete 
on the whole life of the Forerunner j and has been pronounced by com- 
petent judges the best. The testimony of some of our soundest Biblical 
scholars (Baptist and Psedobaptist) has been given to its high value. 

The representation here given of John the Baptist springs, generally 
speaking, from the orthodox Lutheran conception of his life, character, 
and acts, and of the relation of his ministry to the Christian dispensation. 
The views taken of the Baptist are, in the leading points, similar to those 
of Neander (in his "Life of Jesus") and of Olshausen (in his New Testa- 
ment Commentary). 



Price of "John the Baptist," ^5 cents (postage free). Liberal discounts 
made to wholesale purchasers. 
Order of Sheldon & Co., New York • or of Wm. Duncan, New Orleans. 



- 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: July 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



it 



